New Hope nursing home hit with stiff fine after a death
Aug 27, 2009 | 1921 views | 12 
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The California Health and Human Services Agency fined New Hope Care Center $100,000 after an investigation into a report that the nursing home at 2586 Buthmann Ave. ignored the worsening condition of a patient admitted a year ago with a hip fracture, heart problems osteoporosis, hypertension and osteoarthritis.
State investigators concluded that New Hope caregivers “failed to ensure that the resident’s medications were monitored and failed to fully assess the resident or promptly notify the physician when there was a change in the resident’s condition, which resulted in the resident’s death,” according to Al Lundeen, a spokesman for the state agency.
The fine levied on the nursing home is the maximum penalty the agency can impose for a “AA” citation, the harshest assessment for hospitals and nursing homes in California.
Employees of the 5-year-old for-profit nursing home declined to comment on the state’s findings. New Hope’s corporate owner Evergreen Healthcare Companies, LLC, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
According to the state, caregivers failed to keep a close eye on the condition of the patient — whose identity was withheld in the report — after a doctor ordered an increase in medication to prevent blood clots. A possible side effect of the medication is excessive bleeding, according to the regulatory agency.
Because the nursing home staff didn’t monitor a change in the woman’s condition after the doctor upped her anticoagulant prescription, the state said they missed warning signs that could have saved the woman’s life.
On Sept. 14 last year, days after the doctor-ordered increase in her blood-thinning medication, the woman started slurring her words and complaining of a headache, according to relatives who visited her that morning.
“Things did not seem right with her,” the woman’s daughter told the state agency, according to the report accompanying the citation. The woman’s husband said the patient couldn’t talk “because she had a bad headache … and was repeating, ‘my head, my head.’”
Even though the woman woke up just a couple hours earlier, she started nodding off, waking up only to vomit. Her husband complained that the nursing home employees didn’t treat the situation as an emergency. He “felt like the staff was not taking her condition as seriously as he knew they needed to,” according to the citation.
The woman died that day in the emergency room of a Tracy hospital. The patient’s death certificate cites “….inappropriate bleeding or clotting secondary to medication” with hypertension and bleeding in her brain as her cause of death.
New Hope has a spotty public history.
Nursing Home Compare, a government Web site run by Medicare, gave the facility one star out of a five-star ranking — that’s “much below average” — for an assessment that looks at health of patients, safety, staffing, quality of care and other criteria.
The health and human services agency issued a citation and a $1,000 fine in February last year after determining that the nursing staff failed to properly monitor the facility’s infection-control policy. A complaint from July last year says that several patients accused New Hope nurses of walking right past them when they ring the call button.
Sources within the agency have confirmed that there’s an ongoing investigation into New Hope that may end in a second “AA” citation stemming from complaints filed by Tracy resident Paula Baca about medical negligence toward her mother.
“We do have other complaint investigations (connected to New Hope) that are ongoing, but at this time it is too preliminary to disclose information, so that’s all we can say about that,” said Ralph Montano, spokesman for the state’s health agency. “It’s also far too early to speculate as to the outcome of those investigations.”
Baca’s mom stayed at the nursing home between 2006 and 2007. She didn’t die at New Hope, but her health certainly worsened because of her stay there, according to Baca.
“They totally ignored my mom,” Baca said of her 74-year-old mother, whom she transferred to another nursing home months before her death last year after filing complaints against New Hope for allegedly failing to treat her mom’s serious skin infection. “When doctors finally inspected her, they found she had bone marrow cancer, E. coli and a blood infection, among other things.”
The state issues about 20 AA citations a year to California’s 1,300 registered nursing homes. That’s about 1.5 percent of nursing homes in the state.
Several complaints along with the citation history of the nursing home — which averages a citation and several complaints a year — is available on the health and human services Web site at hfcis.cdph.ca.gov.
•Contact Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth at 830-4225 or jwadsworth@tracypress.com.
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Lori
I am very glad they brought me home. They said it was very difficult at first but I rehabilitated myself! Look at me now: write, work, play, talk, give speeches, etc. Just remember that nursing homes are for all ages.
I ended up quitting after a month. I couldnt believe how rude the other "Nurses" were to the elderly people living there. I brought it to managements attention and all I got was a shrug of their shoulders.
While I was in "Training" from another so called nurse, we entered a room where the resident had got out of bed and ended up "making a mess" on herself. The nurse I was with started yelling at the lady saying why she even thought to get out of bed so late, instead of telling her that it was okay and getting her cleaned up and back to bed.
We had a phone that would ring really loud at night if a resident needed something. We knew around 2am a certain resident would call every morning saying she had to go to the bathroom. If another nurse that I was on schedule with didnt feel like going to her room, she would take the phone off of the hook and fall asleep.
After working there I will never put any of my family in one of those places. They just can't be trusted.
One of the biggest problems was thefts by staff of the elderly. Clothing,jewelry,cash and gold dentures were taken.
There were no background checks done on hirees. Dope at the facility I worked at was sold like candy.
It was the worst job I've ever had. Terribly depressing. I finnally quit in disgust. I'm going to die in my house,not in a nursing home.
Mr. Rodriguez went on to work for SunMar who was sued successfully in a class action lawsuit, with similiar claims.
Everytime I enter one of these "ursing" facilities, I am disgusted. The Nurses there have no idea what they are doing. I know this one "Nurse" who had this patient under her care for four months and she had no idea why she was there and how her pt had received her wounds.
These nurses are crap. All these nursing homes NEED to be seen by the public. You would spit in the faces of the families who place their loved ones in the care of these people.
Every one I enter smells like urine and feces, there are pts yelling somewhere throughout the facility for someone to help them. I'm not sure where these nurses got their liscences from but they all need them to be double checked.
If someone is have a hard time bereathing... what would you give them to help them breathe better? Oxygen? Good answer. Some idiot nurses don't think of this.
I'm not shock that this has happened. I'm actually shocked this doesn't happen more often.
Readers should stop by one time and take a look at these hell holes!
Facility's and their more scommon names
New Hope = No Hope
Delta Valley = Death Valley
Whispering Hope = Whitering Hope
Lol. Fun.
I sued Sun, but after major surgery my attorney rushed me into mediation while still recovering, lied to me about the law, coerced, intimidated and threatened me into signing an agreement for damages based solely on SUN’s fraud. He dropped wrongful death while I was distracted and ill. When I regained my strength, I sued for malpractice, he died 2 weeks later, sadly. I won that case in 2008. I refused to sign a confidentialty agreement after mediaiton -after being told that SUN’s CEO was on the phone from his Irvine office with attorneys in the other room and that he would harm me if I forced this case to trial. SUN cheated the taxpayers of the State of Calif out of millions of dollars in fines and according to Claude Vanderwold deputy attorney general this facility was NOT considered in the fine of $2.5 Million in Sept 2005 against Sun for violating the injunction to date. The Dept of Justice turned a blind eye. The Dept of Health didn’t fine the usual $100,000 for her or any other's death.Yet SUN’s own medical director, Dr Scott Stoney says SUN was responsible for her death and he quit due to SUN’s lack of response.
Political corruption? Corporate corruption?
This is not rocket science, Buzz would say.
Deborah Calvert, Newport Beach, California former assistant to Buzz Aldrin