Families, residents angry over closure of Blount County nursing home

By Kristi L. Nelson
Posted January 13, 2012 at 7:20 p.m.

The bitter cold and biting wind seemed to mirror the feelings of several families who showed up at a Friday afternoon meeting to hear state officials explain exactly why Colonial Hills Nursing Center in Maryville lost its certification as a Medicare/Medicaid provider.

About 50 people, half of them families and residents, attended the meeting at which Vincent Davis, director of the state's Division of Health Care Facilities, explained what led to the drastic action and listened to families' and residents' concerns.

Representatives from East Tennessee Human Resources Agency, other state departments and managed-care organizations waited to help individuals after the meeting.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the decision to terminate its contract with Colonial Hills effective Jan. 7, after a series of incidents in 2011 that resulted in actual or potential harm to residents, Davis said. That meant relocating the 110 of its 164 residents whose care was paid by Medicare or Medicaid to other facilities.

Davis said CMS in June put Colonial Hills on a federal "watch list," increasing inspections there and looking for signs its managing company, Cleveland, Tenn.-based Life Care Centers of America, was addressing "underlying systemic issues."

Even after decertifying, Davis said, the state hoped Life Care would keep the nursing home open for private-pay patients, correct the problems that led to the government action, and reapply for Medicare/Medicaid provider status in 180 days.

Instead, Life Care announced earlier this week it plans to close completely and rebuild — meaning all 164 residents had to be relocated, quickly.

"Life Care has chosen not to maintain this facility," Davis said. "That is not a state action. That is a decision of Life Care."

That appeared news to some present, who thought the state had shut down the nursing home.

Nor did many seem to know details of the violations, which Davis outlined:

n A June incident in which several residents were incorrectly given blood thinner, resulting in a four-day hospitalization for one.

n A July violation of residents' rights when a certified nursing assistant took a cell-phone photo of a resident with a disposable brief on his head and forwarded it to others inside and outside the nursing home.

n A November sexual assault of two residents by a visitor that was not promptly addressed and reported.

n A December incident in which nine residents were sickened, two hospitalized, after eating pureed beets that contained 6 grams of salt.

Any one of these incidents, Davis added, was cause for concern; together, they established a "serious and persistent pattern of poor quality of care."

"This corporation has been in business 40-plus years," Davis said. "It has facilities from North to South. It had the wherewithal to fix these issues."

Those present expressed concern that residents' lives were being disrupted, to the detriment of their health, by being moved to other facilities, in some cases a half-hour or more away.

Resident Frances Bell tearfully described living out of boxes in a bare room at Colonial Hills while anxiously waiting to hear whether another facility could take her — "50 miles away from everybody I care about."

"I don't want to go where I have to call long distance every day to speak to my own sister," she said, sobbing.

Cindy Troyer, district long-term-care ombudsman with ETHRA, said some residents have been placed in other nursing homes, including Hillcrest West, which lost CMS provider status in March 2010 but regained it five months later, accepting only private-pay patients in the interim.

Others opted for assisted-living facilities or used the state's CHOICES program, which has no waiting list, to obtain care in private homes. But as the deadline for closure approached, local nursing beds, already in short supply, were becoming sparser.

"Instead of looking at nursing homes one county over, we're going to be looking at multiple counties over, or even further," she said. "It's traumatic for the residents" as well as for families who visit daily, in some cases hand-feeding residents their meals.

As of Friday, 12 of Colonial Hills' 37 remaining residents had been placed, said Life Care CEO Beecher Hunter. He expected to be down to seven residents by week's end.

"We admit we have made mistakes" as a company, Hunter said. Although he said Life Care "respectfully disagreed" with CMS that it had not corrected problems leading to the mistakes, "we regret them very much. ... The real losers are the residents and their family members, and our (employees), who now face uncertain futures."

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January 13, 2012
9:36 p.m.
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GeorgeW writes:

IF it were me, I'd be angry over it staying OPEN as long as it did, if I had a loved one in there. Forget about your own self for a few minutes and get your Mom or Dad settled in somewhere decent.
There is a facility that my Mom was in, on Middlebrook Pike, that I would like to see Mr. Davis inspect. I took my Mom out of there, to come live with us, due to one wrong thing after another, over 4 years ago. I sure hope it has improved.

January 13, 2012
10:45 p.m.
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andrews#1389072 writes:

As I said in another post people should be tickled to death they shut that place down. There is another one in Blount County that is litterly cleaning up financially, but is even a worse disaster in its operation than Colonial Hills. On the outside it’s a showplace with manicured lawns and all the trimmings. Inside and staff wise it’s a whole different ballgame. They make a great to-do over their affiliation with a religious denomination, but look into that a little closer and you'll find that is actually ancient history. There are a great number of things associated with this facility that would probably shock the locals, but I wont go there because I don't want to get sued.

January 13, 2012
11:10 p.m.
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ColtfanJ writes:

Glad that dump was shutdown. Life Care obviously does not care about any of these old people. The only true statement was the real losers being the residents and there families. It's a money grab all the way. That worthless bunch didn't administer my uncles insulin and killed him about 15 years ago.

January 14, 2012
9:03 a.m.
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popahc writes:

The fact is that some of the residents are in such poor health that the disruption of moving them to a strange location at this point in their lives will simply hasten their death. Ask any critical care RN with any experience at all and they will confirm this.

Colonial Hills has obviously demostrated that they were incapable of managing this facility in an acceptable manner. Life Care is certainly getting the negative attention they deserve but, in the end, the residents and their families are the ones that will suffer the most.

Other measures could be taken by CMS to ensure that this home remains open to serve the needs of these fragile residents. I have been told that CMS has the option of having a Federal monitor in facilities that find themselves in this kind of trouble. These CMS monitors have ultimate authority over operations while problems are being worked out, but CMS elected not to do this in this particular case.

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