Connecticut Health Investigative Team (http://c-hit.org/category/fines-sanctions/)
Six nursing homes have been fined by the state Department of Public Health (DPH) for violations that resulted in residents being endangered or injured. Noble Horizons in Salisbury was fined $6,660 for incidents related to elopement risks. On Sept. 23, 2018, a resident with dementia left the facility when a WanderGuard sensor malfunctioned. A driver in a pickup truck found the resident walking down the facility’s driveway.
Five Connecticut nursing homes have been fined by the state Department of Public Health (DPH) for various violations, including several instances in which equipment wasn’t properly cleaned. In one citation, Apple Rehab Saybrook was fined $10,000 for two violations. On Sept. 4, 2018, two licensed practical nurses (LPNs) failed to properly clean and sterilize glucometers after drawing blood from multiple diabetic residents. One LPN who took blood from two residents and another who drew blood from four residents cleaned glucometers with alcohol wipes instead of germicidal wipes, the citation said.
Six nursing homes have been cited by the state Department of Public Health (DPH) for lapses in care, including two cases in which residents died. DPH fined Hancock Hall in Danbury $10,000 in August in connection with three incidents, including the case of a resident who died in June from complications due to a head injury caused by a fall out of a lift, the state citation said. Four days before the death, the resident was kicking and punching two nurse’s aides who were moving the person in the lift, the citation said. A clip on the lift pad came undone and the resident slipped out of the sling and onto the floor and sustained a head injury. A review found that the aides should have stopped the lift and notified a nurse when the person became combative.
The state Board of Examiners for Nursing on today suspended the licenses of two registered nurses, saying their abuse of alcohol poses a danger to the public. The first nurse, Laura Kisatsky of Cornwall, abused alcohol in December, in violation of a consent order she agreed to in 2014. In July, state Department of Public Health (DPH) officials had told the board that Kisatsky’s use of morphine endangered the public. Those charges are pending. In 2005, Kisatsky had voluntarily surrendered her license after admitting stealing controlled substances while working as a nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital, records show.
The state Medical Examining Board fined a Greenwich doctor $3,000 on Tuesday for failing to justify prescribing high doses of opioids for patients in 2015 and 2016. The board also reprimanded the license of Dr. Francis X. Walsh, placed his license on probation for six months and ordered him to take courses in medical documentation and controlled substance prescribing, a consent order he agreed to said. In prescribing the drugs in his office practice, Walsh failed to properly document that he had examined the patients and failed to justify “potentially dangerous dosing and combinations of medications,” the order said. During the probation, Walsh must hire a doctor to review his office practice. Walsh has surrendered his state registration to prescribe controlled substances in that practice, state records show.
Five Connecticut nursing homes have been fined by the state Department of Public Health (DPH) following lapses in care, including one incident after which a resident died. Jewish Senior Services of Bridgeport was fined $3,060 after a resident with multiple sclerosis died after falling from a bed onto the floor. On June 12, 2018, a registered nurse was applying protective dressings to the resident’s coccyx, turned away to dispose of the dressing wrappers and, when she turned back toward the resident, saw the resident was starting to fall, according to the citation. The RN tried to stop the fall but couldn’t. The RN had moved the patient without help, even though the resident’s care plan called for two-staff assistance with mobility, according to the citation.
Connecticut hospitals reported increases in patients suffering from pressure ulcers, as well as serious injuries or deaths associated with falls and burns in 2017, compared to 2016, according to a new state report. Overall, the total number of “adverse events” reported by hospitals dropped from 431 in 2016 to 351 in 2017, a 19 percent decline, the Department of Public Health (DPH) said. But most of the decline was due to the elimination of two categories in 2017: serious injuries or death resulting from perforations during open, laparoscopic or endoscopic procedures; and those resulting from surgeries. Together those categories accounted for 72 adverse events in 2016. The reporting requirement for the two categories was eliminated after a work group of the Quality in Health Care Advisory Committee concluded that the vast majority of perforations that occur during some procedures aren’t preventable, and that serious injuries or death resulting from surgery are already better captured by other categories, the DPH report said.
A nurse at Avon Old Farms School was fined $5,000 today by the state Board of Examiners for Nursing for inappropriately prescribing controlled substances to herself, family members and friends 42 times. Lenore Leone of Avon, an advanced practice registered nurse, who works at the private school under her married name, Lenore Severni, prescribed the drugs for herself and seven friends and relatives from 2014 to 2017, a consent order she agreed to said. The board also reprimanded her license. From 1992 to 2017, Leone also practiced and prescribed controlled substances without having a collaboration agreement with a doctor, as state law requires, the order said. Under the order, Leone must enter into an agreement with a doctor.
The state Medical Examining Board today recommended reinstating the medical license of a former Yale School of Medicine department head who served nine months in prison for lying about his travel expenses while at Johns Hopkins University. In 2017, Dr. Jean-Francois Geschwind of Westport pleaded guilty to four counts of mail fraud arising from his scheme to unlawfully obtain travel expenses from Johns Hopkins, where he was a radiologist, according to the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Geschwind fraudulently received reimbursement for trips to the United Kingdom, France and Japan when some of the expenses were for family vacations and meals, the U.S. attorney said. He was ordered to pay fine of $75,000 and an assessment of $400 and restitution of $583,484, Connecticut and Maryland records show. A liver cancer researcher, Geschwind wrote to the Connecticut board that in 2015, he was recruited by Yale to become its new chair of the radiology department.
State nursing regulators have ordered two former licensed practical nurses to take a refresher course before they can get their licenses back following disciplinary action. But there’s a problem: the only LPN refresher course approved by the state Department of Public Health won’t accept anyone with an active disciplinary order. One of the nurses, Heather Delaney of Oxford, says she has beaten the addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Klonopin that caused her to alter a prescription in 2010 and can safely return to nursing. She agreed to a consent order with the state Board of Examiners for Nursing in 2016, only to be turned down by the approved program, at South Dakota State University, because of the order. Delaney was one of two nurses featured in a January 2018 C-HIT article on nurses and addiction.