In my last post I mentioned South Village Health and rehabilitation in Raleigh. It is a SanStone property. I found where they had been fined almost $300,000.00 by the CMS. The information can be seen on Medicare.gov, nursing home compare website. Although it shows the fines, there is no information as to what they were fined for.
I contacted Beverley Speroff, the Division Chief of the North Carolina Division Health Service Regulation (NCDHSR). I asked Ms. Speroff why I could not find the fines on their "list of facilities with fines" page. Ms Speroff replied that the fines were imposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and would not show on the NCDHSR page.
What it looks like to me is that the NCDHSR does the investigations, but they dont impose the fines. It appears that the CMS Imposes the fines, based on the NCDHSR Investigations. If thats the case it seems they should both post the information. How can the average citizen looking for a nursing home possibly figure this out? How many Government websites do you have to visit to get the whole picture?
Here is the link for the inspection results from the NCDHSR
http://www.ncdhhs.gov/dhsr/facilities/facility.asp?fid=923549
Here is the Medicare.gov (CMS) link. You can click on the penalties tab and see the fines. But there is no explanation. You can also click on the investigations tab and see the latses inspections, none of which explain the penalties.
http://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/profile.html#profTab=4&ID=345137&Distn=2.7&loc=ROCKY%20MOUNT%2C%20NC&lat=35.9382103&lng=-77.7905339
This system is definately not working. It is set up to be confusing, and without extensive research makes no sense at all. There is no useful information from the State (NCDHSR) or the Federal (CMS) website. Together, they make a little more sense but still not completely accurate. The information on both sites is not updated frequently enough to make an educated decision on what homes are good or bad.
Not only is all of the above an issue, but they can kill people and still operate. All they have to do is pay the fine, and that is a worst case scenario. In most cases, they are written up by the NCDHSR and the deficiencies are majically corrected. Could this be a result of Governor McCrory's appointed leader of the NCDHSR? Does Governor McCrory personally have money invested in the nursing home industry, or just his friends and contributors? Either way it is obvious that the owners of these places have no fear of any repercussions resulting from their mistakes, even when they result in death.
I have researched many different nursing homes, most are chains run by shell corporations and managed by other shell companies. They change the names of the corporations like I change my socks. It is almost impossible to keep up with them. An example would be Beystone, a SanStone property, there is Beystone and then there is Beystone new company. This is from the NC Secretary of State Corporations page. I drove by their listed address and it is a FedEx office on Airport road in Arden. It all seems so sketchy simply because it is. These people know how to work the system and if they dont, they just pay someone to change it.
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