TN: Feds: Patients suffered in nursing home fraud case

The federal government has sued Brentwood-based nursing home company Vanguard Healthcare LLC., alleging the company submitted false claims to Medicare and TennCare on behalf of its senior residents and failed to provide them with even basic nursing services.

Moreover, the lawsuit alleges residents suffered "pressure ulcers, falls, dehydration, and malnutrition, among other harms" due to lack of care.

The lawsuit says the falsified claims were for skilled nursing home services that were "either non-existent or grossly substandard" and also included forged physician and nurse signatures, according to the news release sent from the office of U.S. Attorney David Rivera Wednesday.

The lawsuit alleges the false claims were made at six Vanguard facilities, including the Boulevard Terrace Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Murfreesboro; the Crestview Health and Rehabilitation in Nashville; the Glen Oaks Health and Rehabilitation in Shelbyville; the now-defunct Imperial Gardens Health and Rehabilitation in Madison; the Manchester Health Care Center in Manchester; and the Poplar Point Health and Rehabilitation in Memphis.

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The worst allegations come against five of the six facilities, including the Boulevard, Crestview, Imperial, Glen Oaks and Poplar Point sites.

"The lack of adequate care at the Vanguard facilities included chronic staffing shortages and shortages of critical medical supplies, failure to provide standard infection control, failure to administer medication to residents as prescribed by their physicians, failure to provide wound care as ordered by physicians, failure to adequately manage residents’ pain, and providing unnecessary and excessive psychotropic medications to residents and using unnecessary physical restraints on residents," the release states.

The lawsuit alleges Mark Miller, who served as director of operations for Vanguard from September 2011 until August 2014, "knew that resident care at the Vanguard facilities was non-existent or grossly substandard but failed to correct these problems," according to the release.

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Feds: Patients suffered in nursing home fraud case