State closes facility where patient died in bed The care center where a woman strangled to death in her bed is being shut down.
The Rosewood Terrace Care Center was given a rare decertification Friday. It's the end of the line for a center which had a record of noncompliance going back to 1995 and had been fined $355,000 by the state.Officials have 30 days to find Rosewood's 51 remaining Medicaid patients new facilities. But Utah Department of Health spokesman Ross Martin said the residents should be moved within a few days.
Sandra K. Gordon died at the center Jan. 6 after she was strangled by waist and chest restraints the staff has used to confine her to bed. Officials believe Gordon, 45, slipped out of bed and the restraints caught on a rail and strangled her. She wasn't checked for eight hours and her death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.
Rosewood has operated under a conditional license since Jan. 27 - the strongest step the department could take - and ordered to issue a plan of compliance. Its management has been fined $3,050 a day since Jan. 13.
In addition, Dennis McFall, the state's veterans nursing home coordinator, took over operational responsibilities of the troubled facility. Though McFall has done his best, Martin said the problems at Rosewood were too systemic to solve.
"It was like putting a new captain on the Titanic," Martin said. "He didn't really have a chance."
The center told investigators it would be in compliance by Feb. 18.
Federal and state investigators went to Rosewood at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and found patient-to-patient abuse and staff neglecting patients, Martin said. There was a "near total collapse" of the processes needed to run a nursing home, said Rod Betit, director of the Department of Health.
Terminating a Medicaid/Medicare contract with a facility is very rare for the department and the federal Health Care Financing Administration but Betit said there was no choice.
"There has been long indifference to the needs of these patients that can no longer be permitted," he said Friday.
The management system can appeal the decertification or seek a restraining order in federal court, said Doug Springmeyer, an attorney for the Health Department.
Rosewood was certified in 1988 for 79 Medicaid/Medicare patients. Since Utah has a moritorium on Medicaid beds, Rosewood's 79 beds will not be replaced.
Utah has 7,553 long-term care beds in 96 facilities. About 6,000 of them are filled.
Who owns Rosewood is somewhat unclear. It and a sister facility, Ogden Care Center North, are run by Provider Management Systems. According to state records, that business is owned by Medical Capitol Corporation. But Medical Capitol did not file the proper paperwork to be certified as a business by the Utah Department of Commerce last year, Springmeyer said.