Nursing home fails to report missing resident for 2 days
I doubt that the facility even knew he was missing. Staten Island Live had a story about a resident who walked away from the facility on Friday but the facility failed to either recognize that he was missing or failed to contact the police or his family for 48 hours. This is outrageous but not a surprise knowing how short staffed most facilities are these days.
The man, identified as Richard Constable, 66, walked off the grounds of the 200-bed facility sometime Friday but staffers didn't call police until Sunday morning, when a therapist finally noticed his patient was missing a session.
"They felt they would get a better [police] response if they waited until Sunday," said Claudia Hutton, spokeswoman for the state Health Department that licensed the facility. "We were surprised by that. You call the police as soon as you realize a person is missing." Hutton, of the Health Department, said Lakeside probably would be given a citation in the case, and called the response "inappropriate policy." Probably? Why not definitely?
Lakeside has drawn complaints from neighbors who say the residents there are publicly drunk, urinate on lawns and litter properties with trash and cigarette butts. But Anthony Caccamo, who lives across the street, said the patients aren't the problem.
"It's the staff; they're just nasty, miserable people," said Caccamo, 35. "They don't care."
