Nursing Home Passes Health Inspection

Thanks to intense lobbying, the 120 Medicare and Medi-Cal patients at Victoria Care Center won’t have to find a new nursing home after all.

State health inspectors, acting on behalf of federal officials, this week paid a follow-up visit to the center and found it in compliance with minimum standards for care, just days before a Feb. 14 deadline.

“We’re just so happy right now I can’t even tell you,” company Vice President Scott Carlson said Friday.

Had the nursing home not redeemed itself by Monday, the Everglades Street facility, operated by the Arkansas-based Beverly Healthcare chain, stood to lose its Medicare funding, which covers about two-thirds of its 188 patients.

That would have placed the facility at risk of shutting down, potentially forcing patients to relocate outside the county. Only 14 nursing homes countywide take Medi-Cal patients, whose funding is tied to federal Medicare funding. All of those homes have waiting lists.

The nursing home learned on Jan. 25 that the federal government had deemed its care substandard and was prepared to pull its funding. Federal regulators last year learned an elderly female patient there had to have her forehead stitched up; she had fallen out of bed because the bed’s side rails were not put up. Regulators also found patient calls for assistance went unanswered for as long as 18 minutes.

But more than 70 family members of patients at the home quickly campaigned to convince officials they were satisfied overall with the level of care at the center.

Those family members enlisted the help of U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), U.S. Reps. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), state Sens. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) and Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and state Assembly members Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) and Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks).

Investigators visited the site again Thursday and found it had no deficiencies. “Everything has been brought back into compliance,” said Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services.

The U.S. Health Care Financing Administration has been under pressure by the Clinton administration to shut down bad nursing homes. But some critics in California and other states say in the last couple of years regulators have overcompensated and are pulling funding status for isolated or minor infractions.