Despite ongoing complaints and multiple documented failures to meet the state's standards, thanks to due process, they can continue to operate and take in new residents until all licensing appeals are exhausted. The Department of Social Services, which regulates them, was unable to give a timeline for the process, which in the instance of Madison Retirement Center in Williamsburg has continued for almost a year, since March 2012.Administrative problems:
Over the years, Scott Schuett expanded ProPlusCare to operate six ALFs — Madison, Ashwood Assisted Living in Hampton, Oakwood Assisted Living in Suffolk, Governor's Inn in Newport News, and Chesapeake Home and Colonial Home, both in Chesapeake — with the capacity to house 400 residents, the vast majority of them low income living on Social Security disability, SSI, supplemented by auxiliary housing grants from the state.After multiple inspections by the Department of Social Services revealed a litany of violations at each facility, including medication mismanagement, inadequate food supplies, bed bugs and foul odors, Schuett and two of his employees, Rena Gaddy Thomas and Donna Norvell, were stripped of their administrator's licenses in late 2012 by the Board of Long Term Care Administrators. It determined that Schuett's practice posed "a substantial danger to the public health and safety."
Expired licenses and more:
At the end of November Schuett voluntarily closed one facility, Governor's Inn in Newport News, but the other five continue to operate, including Madison, whose conditional license (an indicator of prior problems) expired almost a year ago, in March 2012. Norvell, who lost her license in October, was the administrator of record there. No qualified replacement is listed by the Department of Social Services.
By law, ALFs must employ a licensed administrator or a qualified acting administrator.
Full Article and Source:
Assisted living facilities continue to operate despite expired licenses, violations
See Also:
Scott Schuett, Operator of 5 ALF's License Revoked
5 comments:
Take in new patients? OMG!
Where is government when we really need it?
I don't get it, why are they allowing these facilities to remain open?
who is paying who to do nothing this goes to show the walls of protection made of $ and slime are thick
ALF's are as dangerous as nursing homes nowdays. It's scary.
Thank you for posting, NASGA.
Thelma asked "Where is government when we really need it?" Good question! Government is not just ignoring its responsibilities, it's on the WRONG side, making sure that these innocent, helpless citizens continue to be abused and neglected.
Trish Myer of Va DSS Licensing is trying mightily to keep these awful places open, when she obviously has the power and duty to close them, long before yesterday.
Chuck Hall of the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board is spouting genial platitudes, and blaming the appalling conditions at these adult homes on everybody but his good buddy, proprietor Scott Schuett.
Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia, a public guardianship program supported by the Virginia Department for the Aging, dumped an older lady with dementia in one of these hellholes for seven months last year, IN VIOLATION OF A COURT ORDER.
Colleen Dickerson, the guardian ad litem "for" this lady, body slammed anybody who cared about this lady, and ran around making ex parte contacts with the court, painting a false, rosy picture of the lady's circumstances, and keeping the case off the court docket. The GAL even failed to appear at a court hearing, and stopped answering phone calls from those who care about this lady.
Frank Driscoll, the lawyer for Catholic Charities, backslapped, guffawed, and all but spooned with Dickerson, as they laughed uproariously in the courtroom hallways at any attempts to help her. Driscoll covered up and withheld, in violation of a discovery order, a check register that showed that Catholic Charities bounced 13 checks on this lady's account in a single month. Driscoll did muster the righteous indignation to protest vehemently that HE was delayed for awhile after a hearing. Of course, the purpose of the hearing was to determine why he had defaulted and utterly failed to answer a mandatory court pleading or to answer mandatory discovery. However, Driscoll couldn't muster any indignation or compassion whatsoever for the suffering that he and his client, Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia, had caused this lady.
Christianna Dougherty-Cunningham of the Virginia Beach City Attorney's Office, representing Virginia Beach Adult Protective Services, and her boss, Deputy City Attorney Christopher S. Boynton, repeatedly flat out lied to the court, and attempted to deprive this lady of the attorney that she requested, the very same attorney that the GAL and others affiliated with VBDHS had referred the lady to, in the unrealized expectation that this attorney would take a dive and sell her client down the river, just as the GAL had.
The Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Advisory Board, as usual, presented plaques honoring each other, made corny speeches about how critical public guardianship is and how much they care about the elderly, and ignored these festering problems, trying to evade any responsibility to oversee these programs or to develop something as seemingly simple and common sense as a complaint procedure. (Since these public guardianship programs are conclusively presumed perfect, after all, we don't even need a complaint procedure.)
And all of this was done at the behest of Virginia Beach Adult "Protective" "Services," which believes that we should shut out the cries of these citizens, and let them continue to suffer in silence.
That's where government is, Thelma, when we really need it.
Post a Comment