Brandon Woods at Alvamar is among the nursing homes that a state advocacy group has identified as having poor inspection records over the past three years.
The Kansas Advocates for Better Care released a list this week of Kansas nursing homes that have an above-average number of deficiencies in their inspections records. The data is based on three inspection reports, which by federal law must be done every 12 to 15 months, done by the Kansas Department on Aging.
The national average of deficiencies is eight, and in Kansas the average is 14. The advocacy group identified 81 nursing home facilities that exceeded the national average for three consecutive years. Brandon Woods is among them with an average of 20 deficiencies per year.
“These are standout facilities in terms of a pattern of having deficiencies over a period of three years,” said Margaret Farley, board president of Kansas Advocates for Better Care. “This is not a one-shot survey.”
The deficiencies found at Brandon Woods, which are detailed online at Medicare.gov, over the past year ranged from failing to resolve each resident’s complaints to not giving the proper treatment to bed sores.
Just one of the deficiencies — failing to make sure the nursing home area is free of dangers that cause accidents — was noted as causing actual harm. All the others were listed as causing minimal harm or having potential for actual harm.
And one deficiency — failing to post nurse staffing information — was listed as affecting many residents. The other deficiencies affected a few or some of them.
Two of the deficiencies were for failure to hire only people who have no legal history of abusing, neglecting or mistreating residents or for failure to report and investigate any acts or reports of abuse, neglect or mistreatment of residents. And three involved how the nursing home facility managed and administered drugs
.All but one of the deficiencies have been corrected, according to the Medicare.gov report.
Officials at Brandon Woods could not be reached for comment.
“A lot of facilities can have a stumble. Maybe it is just a change of management, or maybe they are having serious difficulties with staffing,” Farley said. “But we expect, and consumers should expect, if a facility has a poor inspection report with a high number of deficiencies, that they need to get on that and break a pattern.”
No other Lawrence nursing home facilities were on the list.
Tagged: Kansas Advocates for Better Care, Brandon Woods at Alvamar
Comments
JayhawkFan1985 1 year, 5 months ago
Maybe someone can explain to me how the State of Kansas with the push to cut taxes will be able to continue inspecting nursing homes. We all need to remember that taxes are needed to pay for critical services. I would say that inspecting nursing homes is a critical service. The so called market place regulation that Liberty One talks about on these blogs obviously aint a working.
sunshine_noise 1 year, 5 months ago
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sunshine_noise 1 year, 5 months ago
Doesn't surprise me. With an organization that has a high turnover of employees it is evident there is something not right about this place. They need an administrator to go in there and kick some butt. Clean out the rif-raf and high people willing to work, are mature, organized and follow through on task. I think they've had weak administration, inexperienced office staff, poor communication within and too worried about selling units and making an impression to look good in the community other than building a solid foundation to insure future stability of the place. Its time someone steps up and does a real job in running that place. Out elderly deserve it.
lunacydetector 1 year, 5 months ago
being understaffed brings trouble.
xclusive85 1 year, 5 months ago
I worked as a CNA for several years. For a few of those years, I was working for staffing agencies and went to many nursing homes throughout the state. I started at the end of 2004 as a Brandon Woods employee. I worked in what they called the Arbor, South and North. I worked there until July of 2008. This was all for you to know where my perspective comes from.
During the time that I worked there, Brandon Woods was one of the best skilled nursing facilites in the state. We had a 0 deficiency survey. A zero nursing staff deficiency survey, which means that our administration had deficiencies, but the staff that interacts most with the residents had none. We even won an award in 2008 called Promoting Excellent Alternatives in Kansas Nursing Homes Award. On top of that, major renevations that spanned the majority of the time I spent there were completed.
To many, that may seem like Brandon Woods was turining into a great place to have your loved ones live. To be fair, it was for a while. We had great staff, that got along with each other and helped each other. Towards the end of the time I worked there, we had a new DON and a new Nurse Manager for the south building hired. These two people started the steep decline of Brandon Woods. I tried to let higher management know, but no one listened.
In 2008, because of graduation, school transfers, and moving we were losing about 3/4 of our evening nursing staff. I tried to tell the nurse manager and DON that this was coming about and they needed to hire new people so that we could get them trained and up to speed on what each residents specific needs and wants were. They did not listen. When it finally happened, they were caught offguard and staffing issues arose more often then what had happened for the previous 3 years. In fact, many times there were two or three aides for all of the residents in South.
xclusive85 1 year, 5 months ago
I thought this part deserved it's own post, just in case you didn't want to read the whole previous post.
The reason I quit my job at Brandon Woods was twofold. I had been accepted to medical school, so I was going to leave at the very end of July anyway. I left on July 6th, however, because of the Nurse Manager.
The Brandon Woods management decided to no longer want their employees to see their job as more than a job. Many of us really cared for the residents like they were family. Some families even became very close with some of the workers. I still stay in touch with several families here in Lawrence that I met through their loved one at Brandon Woods.
One such resident died on a day that I was not scheduled to work. I was very close with this resident. He prefered me to do certain things for him that he did not want other staff to do. We shared stories about our lives. He was a great man. His family is great too.
One of the girls that was assigned to work his hallway was working her last day when he died. We had become very good friends. She texted me and let me know that he had passed, something that we knew was coming. She was not doing a very good job of keeping it together. His daughter texted me shortly afterward and asked me to come up if I had the time. Of course I went right up, and spoke with the family briefly and then with the girl. I was pretty broken up about it, mostly because of the family being sad.
Anyway, the Nurse Manager tried to come to talk to me/yell at me, but was stopped by one of the nurses who knew what she had on her mind. As soon as I walked out the door, (I wasn't even to my car yet) I got a phone call from her. She started yelling and screaming about how I shouldn't be up there on my day off and that I shouldn't be distracting other staff, residents, or their families. After that, I couldn't bring myself to work under her. I turned in my two weeks notice and stayed a little longer than that (since they begged me to) so that they would have more than two staff over the 4th of July holiday.
In short, I loved the staff I worked with. I loved the residents. I hated the management.
xclusive85 1 year, 5 months ago
Christine, is there anyway that this can show up as a regular story on the main ljworld.com site instead of just a WellCommons article? It would get more traffic that way, I think and this needs to be brought to as many people as possible.
ChristineMetz 1 year, 5 months ago
Hi xclusive85,
The home page of the Ljworld.com had a link to this story all day Sunday, which is what we usually do for WellCommons story.
Thanks for your interest and comments.
Christine
SWJayhawk13 1 year, 5 months ago
I'm not surprised. A family member of mine died while at Brandon Woods, and what it boiled down to was the staff not paying attention to her health, and not getting her emergency medical care when she clearly needed it.
I know a handful of nurses who have been hired by Brandon Woods. Some of them are fantastic nurses, and I wonder why on earth they are working at a dump like Brandon Woods. As for the others, I don't know how they even have nursing licenses anymore. They have been fired from previous nursing jobs for not scanning medicine when giving it to patients, stealing medication from patients, etc. I haven't talked to these people in years, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were some of the people directly involved in the deficiencies.
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