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Deb Miller knows all about the complaints the Indiana Attorney General's office filed against Prairie View Nursing Home Administrator Stephen Jones.
Those citations result from the approximate two weeks when her father, Lawrence E. Ritchey, 86, was in the nursing home for physical therapy.
He was admitted to the nursing home March 31, 1999, at 11:15 a.m. He died April 15, 1999, in the nursing home.
Jones is one of 68 Indiana nursing home administrators who received complaints filed against them by the Indiana attorney general's office in June.
The complaints could result in the administrators losing their licenses.
The complaints allege that the nursing homes the administrators manage had serious deficiencies that threatened the well-being of some residents.
The Indiana Board of Health Facility Administrators will hear the cases and has the authority to suspend or revoke an administrator's license.
Thursday, when asked to comment on this story, Jones said, "My attorney has advised me not to speak at this time."
In a previous interview, Jones said the nursing home is fine and is in compliance with state and federal regulations.
But Miller doesn't buy that. "It's only been brought into compliance on paper," she said Thursday.
When her father was admitted to Prairie View, she said, he was in stable condition. He was living in Grace Village, but after suffering from a case of pneumonia, he was taken to the hospital and then to Prairie View to get his strength back. All other nursing homes were filled at the time, she said.
The problems, Miller said, began right away.
"Two days after being admitted, they left him too long and he fell asleep and he fell out of his wheelchair," she said. The local fire department had to help get him back into bed. Had it not been for another resident's wife, she alleges, nursing home personnel would never have noticed.
Miller then learned of other problems. She claims her father was not given his ventimask and his insulin was not properly given. "There were holes in his medicine chart," she said. "There was one nurse's aide that took it upon herself to turn down his oxygen."
A bedsore that was treated at the hospital was not treated at the nursing home. "The physical therapist," Miller said, "said it looked like raw hamburger meat."
The Thursday before Ritchey died, he fell out of his bed a second time. The nursing home, Miller said, never told his doctor or her. Ritchey's roommate at the time told Miller about it.
An Indiana State Department of Health statement of deficiencies supports Miller's claims.
"I'd like to see them shut down," Miller said. "There were so many people involved in this, it's not just one person. The minute we got (my father) into Prairie View, it was a nightmare."
When she learned that the attorney general was going to do something about Prairie View, as well as 67 other nursing homes throughout the state, she said, words can not describe how she felt.
"Over a year," she said, "I've been running into brick walls and finally something is being done."
She has talked to the attorney general's office, she said, and "I will be there in court." While she doesn't know when that will be yet, "Stephen Jones will see me in court," she said.
Through it all, Miller still misses her father. "My dad," she said, "was very witty, very intelligent. He acted more like a 50-year-old than an 86-year-old."
She said he had "absolutely no memory problem. He was very alert. He knew what was going on, he just couldn't do anything about it."
According to the Indiana attorney general's filing document, "numerous serious deficiencies and health risks were found at the facility."
Some of those risks, according to the document, include:
"The facility failed to ensure a resident's physician was immediately informed of significant changes in the resident's physical status or a need to alter treatment; failed to ensure policies and procedures were implemented to prohibit neglect; failed to ensure residents were provided services by a qualified person; failed to provide the necessary care and services to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical well-being of a resident; failed to ensure residents admitted with a pressure sore received the necessary treatment and services to promote healing; failed to ensure adequate supervision of the residents to prevent an accident; failed to ensure that residents received proper respiratory care; failed to ensure sufficient nursing staff was provided to prevent neglect; and failed to provide the services of a registered nurse for at least eight hours per day, seven days per week."
