Johnson County nursing home didn’t know it had COVID cluster. Until it tested everyone
An Olathe nursing home administrator wondered why, after many weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, the facility had just one case.
So Rodney Whittington, chief executive officer of Villa St. Francis, decided to test all residents and staff beginning late last week. So far, 22 residents and 15 staff members have tested positive. Fifty tests are pending.
“It came to the point where I had trouble believing this because we are so big,” said Whittington of the facility with 170 residents and about 250 staff members. “First and foremost, it’s because I know this thing goes undetected so often. We could be lulled to a comfort level because we’re saying we are COVID free and we might not be.”
The facility began to expand its testing after one employee tested positive for the virus earlier this month. After conducting contact tracing, Whittington said, 14 employees who had come in contact with that worker were tested. The worker had no contact with residents.
All those tests came back negative. But he still worried that the coronavirus was inside the facility, and that he and other couldn’t see it.
Whittington said he called the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment and asked for tests for residents and staff at Villa St. Francis. He soon discovered he couldn’t get them from the county.
“They denied it because they don’t provide the test unless there are symptoms,” Whittington said. “We had to find a lab.”
After about a week, Villa St. Francis did. And when the results began to come back, the numbers shot up.
The vast majority of the cases have been asymptomatic, Whittington said. Three residents have been hospitalized, and one has already returned to Villa St. Francis. As of Tuesday, there have been no deaths at the facility.
“We wanted to get ahead of this,” he said. “... I’d rather know than be running in the dark.
“I don’t want to wait until they’re in respiratory distress before we do something.”
Several nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the Kansas City area have been hit hard with the coronavirus. In Kansas City, Kansas, Riverbend Post Acute Rehabilitation has had 132 cases and 36 deaths since April 1. Two other facilities in KCK have had large clusters of cases.
In Johnson County, about 77 percent of the COVID-19 deaths have been from long-term care facilities. Currently, there are eight facilities with active outbreaks, including Brighton Gardens, which has had 83 cases and 17 deaths.
Villa St. Francis is the latest to report a confirmed cluster.
The Olathe facility has a five out of five stars overall rating — described as “much above average” — by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees and inspects nursing homes. It received three of five stars, or an average rating, in the “health inspections” category; four of five stars for staffing levels; and five of five stars for quality of resident care.
Villa St. Francis’s last inspection was Nov. 7, 2019. It found six deficiencies — below the national average of 8.2 — all of which indicated the “level of harm” as being “minimal harm or potential for actual harm.” Among the deficiencies noted were that the facility “failed to provide and implement an infection prevention and control program.”
The report shows all deficiencies were corrected by Dec. 6.
As the facility works to identify and contain the virus, officials update families every day, Whittington said. The plan is to test everyone again.
“What’s right for us to do, is to get facts so we can treat people at the highest level,” he said. “... There’s no need to hide anything, we’re doing everything on the up and up and we’re taking the very best care of our staff and residents we can.
“We’ve just got to hope and pray that our diligence will save some lives — that’s what I hope for.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 4:34 PM.
