As state regulators investigate allegations of abuse at a Raleigh nursing home, a nursing home in Lillington owned by the same company has come under fire for the care it provides to patients.
Steven Bryant recorded a recent visit he made to Universal Healthcare of Lillington to see his 82-year-old mother. Sudie Bryant had complained of the care she had been receiving, he said, so he wanted to document what happened while he was there.
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When he walked into her room, Steven Bryant said he knew something was wrong just by the smell.
"When was the last time the nurse changed you?" he asked. "It smells like pee really really bad. I smelled the odor when I walked in the door."
"I don't know. I have no idea," his mother said.
Steven Bryant went to the nurse's desk for help but said he was told the aides were busy feeding patients. His mother told him she's used to waiting.
"They come when they feel like it. They don't feel like, they don't come," she said.
When the aides did arrive, they uncovered the problem. Sudie Bryant had been lying in a puddle of urine for so long that it had turned brown.
"Why is my mom lying in that condition?" Steven Bryant asked.
"Sir, I'll be honest with you. We've been doing our best," an aide said. "It's just two [aides] in this hall, and honestly, we're doing the best we can."
As one aide leaves to get an administrator, the other explains staff cutbacks are the problem.
"I am glad that you are here to see it because we tell them time and time again that it's too much, too much," she said. "They don't listen to us. We need the families to complain. We need families to see how it really is."
As Sudie Bryant continued to sit in the dry urine, the administrator arrived and began questioning the aides.
"Have you had her all day? Have you changed her at all today?" the administrator asked.
"Honestly, like I told him. We're doing our best," the aide replied.
For Steven Bryant, their best wasn't good enough, and he moved his mother out that day.
"I'm going to get you help, Mom. I can't stand to see you being treated like this anymore. Today is the day we are going to change that," he said.
"Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord," Sudie Bryant said.
Steven Bryant filed a complaint with the state Division of Health Service Regulation, but state inspectors found no deficiencies in Universal Healthcare of Lillington's operations.
"Following notice of the family’s complaint, we immediately launched an internal review. We also engaged the services of an independent, outside investigator to examine these claims as expeditiously and thoroughly as possible," Universal Healthcare of Lillington administrators said in a statement. "Our primary priority is and always has been the safety and well-being of all patients in our care."
Inspectors did determine during their visit, however, that another patient had been physically abused by a nurse's aide, and the state said the facility failed to properly look into that.
The visit was one of 30 that regulators have made to the nursing home in the past three years in response to complaints. They found deficiencies in only four of those complaints.
At Universal Health Care of North Raleigh, state regulators are reviewing the case of a man who was left on the floor of his room for more than an hour after falling out of bed and was then berated by staffers. The man's daughter caught the incident on a hidden camera she had put into his room.