Click here to subscribe today or Login.
By Steve Mocarsky
HARRISBURG — Nursing homes in Wilkes-Barre and Tunkhannock are among 14 named in a lawsuit in which the state Attorney General alleges residents were being neglected.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane on Wednesday filed a legal action against Golden Gate National Senior Care LLC and subsidiaries that she accused of misleading consumers by failing to provide basic services to elderly and vulnerable residents.
Golden Gate operates 36 facilities statewide. Its subsidiaries are known as Golden LivingCenters, of which 14 are named in the lawsuit, including Golden LivingCenter – Summit, 50 N. Pennsylvania Ave., Wilkes-Barre, and Golden LivingCenter – Tunkhannock, 30 Virginia Drive, Tunkhannock. The company website lists over 300 facilities in 21 states.
“As we allege, these companies profited at the expense of our most vulnerable residents,” Kane said. “These facilities promised to provide the care needed by residents and then failed to meet residents’ most basic human needs. That is simply unacceptable.”
Golden Gate denies the allegations.
“Golden Living is confident that claims made by the Attorney General are baseless and wholly without merit,” the company said in an emailed statement.
“No doubt, this is an unfortunate result of Kathleen Kane’s inappropriate and questionable relationship with a Washington, D.C.-based plaintiff’s firm that preys on legitimate businesses and is paid by contingency fees. Golden Living also believes that this complaint is in retaliation for our challenging the Attorney General’s authority in a pending lawsuit,” the email states. “We plan to vigorously defend the reputation of Golden Living and its employees.”
Read the lawsuit
The legal action asserts Golden Gate violated the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law by deceiving consumers through its marketing practices, in which it advertised that it would keep residents clean and comfortable while providing food and water at any time.
But Kane alleges that facilities were understaffed, leaving residents thirsty, hungry, dirty, unkempt and sometimes unable to summon anyone to help meet their most basic needs.
Moreover, interviews with residents’ family members and former certified nursing assistants who worked at Golden Living facilities revealed a widespread pattern of understaffing and omitted care, the legal action states. Those allegations include:
• Continent residents left in diapers because they were unable to get help to go to the bathroom.
• Incontinent residents left in soiled diapers for extended periods of time.
• Residents at risk for bedsores from not being turned every two hours as required.
• Residents not receiving range-of-motion exercises.
• Residents not receiving showers or other hygiene services as required.
• Residents being woken at 5 a.m. or earlier to be washed and dressed for the day.
• Residents not being timely dressed in order to attend their meals.
• Residents not being escorted to the dining hall and sometimes missing meals entirely.
• Long waits for responses to call bells or no responses at all.
• Staff, under the direction of management or fear of management, falsifying records to indicate residents received services when in fact they did not.
• Improved staffing when state inspections occurred, leading to deceit about the true conditions at the facility.
The investigation also included a review of staffing levels self-reported by Golden Living facilities and deficiencies cited in surveys conducted by the state Department of Health.
The legal action, filed in Commonwealth Court, seeks to prohibit Golden Living from engaging in the allegedly deceptive and unlawful business practices of which it is accused.
It also seeks $1,000 per violation of the law, or up to $3,000 for every violation involving a person 60 years old or older. The action also seeks restitution for consumers, injunctive relief and costs of litigation.
Golden LivingCenter – East Mountain Manor in Plains Township was not named in the lawsuit.
State Secretary of Health Karen Murphy said she was “deeply concerned” by the allegations, and that the Department of Health “will accelerate its current efforts to evaluate our Regulatory processes in order to determine what additional measures can be taken to ensure enhanced quality in the future.”
Murphy said she has also engaged Auditor General Eugene DePasquale in a cooperative effort to audit the policies and procedures already in place in the Department of Health to recommend ways the department can improve how it enforces its statutory enforcement authority.
The Department also will:
• Form a Pennsylvania Nursing Home Quality Improvement Task Force comprised of experts and stakeholders in long-term care, which will be charged with advancing quality improvement in long-term care facilities.
• Establish an interagency work team on long-term care to identify strategies that expand communication between various long-term care programs and ensure complaints from consumers are addressed and resolved by the proper department.
Reach Steve Mocarsky at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @TLSteveMocarsky.