by SEAN CAMPBELL & CHARLENE HARRINGTON
The care at Landmark of Louisville Rehabilitation and Nursing was abysmal when state inspectors filed their survey report of the Kentucky facility on July 3, 2021.
Residents wandered the halls in a facility that can house up to 250 people, yelling at each other and stealing blankets. One resident beat a roommate with a stick, causing bruising and skin tears. Another was found in bed with a broken finger and a bloody forehead gash. That person was allowed to roam and enter the beds of other residents. In another case, there was sexual touching in the dayroom between residents, according to the report.
Meals were served from filthy meal carts on plastic foam trays, and residents struggled to cut their food with dull plastic cutlery. Broken tiles lined showers, and a mysterious black gunk marred the floors. The director of housekeeping reported that the dining room was unsanitary. Overall, there was a critical lack of training, staff and supervision.
The inspectors tagged Landmark as deficient in 29 areas, including six that put residents in immediate jeopardy of serious harm and three where actual harm was found. The issues were so severe that the government slapped Landmark with a fine of over US$319,000 ? more than 29 times the average for a nursing home in 2021 ? and suspended payments to the home from federal Medicaid and Medicare funds.
This excerpt from the July 3, 2021, state inspection report of Landmark of Louisville Rehabilitation and Nursing includes an interview with a nurse who found an injured resident. IMAGE/ New York State attorney general’s office
Persistent problems
But problems persisted. Five months later, inspectors levied six additional deficiencies of immediate jeopardy ? the highest level ? including more sexual abuse among residents and a certified nursing assistant pushing someone down, bruising the person’s back and hip.
Landmark is just one of the 58 facilities run by parent company Infinity Healthcare Management across five states. The government issued penalties to the company almost 4½ times the national average, according to bimonthly data that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services first started to make available in late 2022. All told, Infinity paid nearly $10 million in fines since 2021, the highest among nursing home chains with fewer than 100 facilities.
Infinity Healthcare Management and its executives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Such sanctions are nothing new for Infinity or other for-profit nursing home chains that have dominated an industry long known for cutting corners in pursuit of profits for private owners. But this race to the bottom to extract profits is accelerating despite demands by government officials, health care experts and advocacy groups to protect the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
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