Raleigh Nursing Home Fined, Warned
A North Raleigh Nursing home with a troubled past has been hit with more than $16,000 in fines and ordered to clean up or lose public funds. Last week state inspectors found substandard care at Windsor House of Raleigh. Now, the results of the state's investigation are in.
Tommy Anderson has lived at Windsor House for six months. He gets physical therapy for his legs after being wounded in a drive-by shooting in Washington, DC. He says the nursing home doesn't have enough staff to serve its residents.
The state document is 87 pages long. In it, inspectors wrote that some residents had "long, dirty and fungal infected fingernails" which were not cleaned for days at a time. Other patients reportedly had pressure sores, otherwise knows as bed sores, from not being turned regularly. On one day inspectors reported that nine residents had not received their 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. medications.
Chief of Licensure Steve White says there was one situation where a patient's blood pressure medication was not given appropriately, and the patient's blood pressure shot up.
This isn't the first time this nursing home has been warned about its deficiencies. The state fined the previous owners last year and the year before when it used the name Meadowbrook Terrace. Atlanta-based Centennial Health Care took over the management of Windsor House on June first.
Carolyn Freeman, a Regional Manager with Centennial Healthcare says these problems aren't new to the facility, and measures are being taken to correct them.
The public pays three-fourths of the cost of nursing homes in North Carolina through Medicaid and Medicare. If the home does not fix its deficiencies before August 13th, the state will cut off those funds.
The state's chief of licensure, says 2 percent to 3 percent of nursing homes are cited for deficiencies each year. That's eight to 12 homes statewide.
andKerrie Hudzinski
