South Carolina Nursing Home Blog : South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

The American College of Health Care Administrators (ACHCA) is a defender and apologist for administrators of nursing homes.   The ACHCA gave their Excellence in Leadership Award to Forrest Preston, founder and chairman of Life Care Centers of America saying he has "made a great impact on long-term care . . .."   With all the well-publicized problems with facilities operated by Life Care Centers of America, it is incredible that anyone would give this crook an award.  See press release here.

The ACHCA has lost any credibility that others might have thought they should have by giving an award to the chairman of Life Care Centers of America.  Preston has been an active supporter of ACHCA for more than two decades, directing all Life Care executive directors to become paid members of ACHCA and to achieve certification through this organization.

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Below is an email i recieved from an ex-employee of Life Care Centers of America.  I have redacted certain personal information to protect her.

Comments: To Whom it May Concern,

I'm a former employee of Life Care Center of Sandpoint located in Sandpoint, Idaho. I ended my employment with Life Care. I found an interesting article on the internet by an Attorney in California on the operations of 13 different Nursing Homes. It had to do with abuse, neglect, fraud and other types of bad business conduct.

I was employee at Life Care for 6+ years and worked in the Marketing & Admissions process for approx 3-4 months. I did not do that job for very long because I felt I was lying to the families about the wonderful care resident's were to receive. I would walked down the halls and find residents not positioned in their wheel chairs properly, uncombed hair, dirty faces, needless to say unshowered for a week at a time! I soon went back to the floor as a C.N.A. to take care of the people.

And yes lots of times the facility were I worked was short staffed, many of the Resident's needs were not being met. Needless to say when it came time for employees to take their vacation they were denied because there was no coverage.   So many had to find their own coverage!  Which was one of the benefits for working for such a Company is Paid Vacation days. It is a bitter
subject for me being they have not paid me of my Vacation days acquired.

Anyways about Life Care and their Policy. They have an electronic system to record all of the Cares done for the Resident' by the CNA'S.  Which it seems to me a big cover up to blame their business practices on the CNA's there. Also they have another system called IDA which records all the incident of residents. It is such a clever thing to have this system . But what it does is steal the Care from the Resident's while you sit and do all your charting at a computer for a 1/2 hr to an Hour. The managers have so many meetings that they can't even get their own work done! And on and on it goes. May main concern is for the resident's in those places. They lose everything they worked for!
 

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Our firm has a case against Life Care Centers of America for a facility that they operate in Hilton Head, S.C.  I was doing some research about Life Care Centers and ran across this article in the Chattanoogan.com about Tennesse suspending admissions in one of their facilities.

The article states that Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Susan R. Cooper, MSN, RN, has suspended new admissions of residents to Life Care Center of Red Bank nursing home effective June 17, 2009, and imposed a one-time state civil monetary penalty of $5,000. A federal civil penalty has been imposed at $6,150 a day until the violations are corrected. A special monitor has been appointed to review the facility's operations.

Life Care Center of Red Bank was ordered not to admit any new residents based on conditions found during a complaint investigation and annual survey conducted May 26 through June 9.  During the survey, surveyors found violations of the following standards: administration, performance improvement, physician services, nursing services, medical records, and pharmaceutical services.

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