Topeka nursing home to close in 60 days
Operating company was insolvent
Residents of a Topeka nursing home will have 60 days to move after its owner couldn’t make payroll and no one else stepped forward to run it.
Joe Ewert, Kansas Department on Aging and Disability Services commissioner on the survey, certification and credentialing commission, said the state took over Washburn Community Care Center after its operator, Deseret Health Group, said it was financially insolvent. That was an unusual situation for a long-term care facility, he said.
A representative from Deseret “said their payroll wasn’t going to go through that Friday,” he said.
The state took over temporarily so staff would get paid and continue providing care to residents, Ewert said. A manager is overseeing operations until residents can relocate, because no one expressed interest in running the facility, he said.
Staff from KDADS and the three managed care organizations that administer Medicaid in Kansas met with residents and their families Monday afternoon, as did the state’s long-term care ombudsman, Ewert said. The staff are working with the residents and families to find other facilities that meet their needs and goals within the next 60 days, he said. The facility now has 26 residents.
“Any time a building has to close we want to make sure it is done in a caring manner,” he said.
Deseret also operated a facility in Wichita, but a new operator agreed to take over that facility, Ewert said. The company is based in Bountiful, Utah, and has facilities in that state, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming.
A phone number for Deseret said the general mailbox was full and couldn’t accept more messages, and no one picked up the phone Monday.
The takeover wasn’t related to quality issues, though Washburn Community Care had a history of them. An inspection in February 2013 found 32 violations, including that some funds couldn’t be accounted for, some residents didn’t receive regular grooming services, some areas of the home were dirty and one resident had to be hospitalized when staff applied a new Fentanyl patch without removing the old one, causing an overdose of opiates.
The home also had more recent violations. Concerns about managing resident money persisted in the April 2014 inspection, and in October the facility was cited for problems with care for a resident who had a Clostridium difficile infection. The resident wasn’t isolated, despite having a highly contagious infection, and continued to receive laxatives that had been prescribed before the infection, which causes severe diarrhea.