Westport Nursing Home Fined Following Theft Of Residents’ Funds; Four Others Cited For Care Lapses

Five nursing homes have been fined by the state, including a facility in Westport where money was taken from residents’ trust funds. Westport Rehabilitation Complex was fined $8,120 following the discovery of the thefts and another incident in which a resident was injured. An investigation found that 20 residents had money missing from their resident trust funds and a facility business office manager was responsible, according to the Department of Public Health (DPH). In total, $3,161 was taken from the residents’ accounts. According to the citation, the missing funds were discovered in November 2018 when an employee alerted the facility’s administrator of “concerns regarding the facility-managed residents’ trust funds.”  Several withdrawal documents appeared to have been altered with Wite-Out.

DPH Fines Three Nursing Homes Following Lapses In Care

The state has cited and fined three nursing homes for various violations, including mismanagement of medication. The state Department of Public Health fined Apple Rehab Rocky Hill $3,000 for seven incidents. One incident on Oct. 27, 2016, involved a resident’s hospitalization for an uncontrolled nosebleed. DPH found staff had mismanaged the resident’s anticoagulant medication prescriptions.

Six Nursing Homes Fined Following Resident’s Death, Lapses In Care

Six nursing homes have been fined in connection with one resident who was physically abused, one who broke a leg and one who was hospitalized with severe dehydration and later died. In two state Department of Public Health [DPH] citations on Dec. 7, Touchpoints at Farmington was fined a total of $2,810 in connection with a resident who was hospitalized in May 2015 in intensive care with severe dehydration and then transferred to hospice care. Maura Downes, DPH’s spokeswoman, said the resident died more than two weeks after the incident, but DPH officials were not able to “substantiate causation between the incident and the resident’s death.”

The home was fined $1,580 in connection with the resident’s decline in fluid intake over eight days in May 2015. The home’s records failed to show that a doctor had been notified about the resident’s fluid intake, the citation said.