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Nursing home owners agree to $750,000 settlement over patient death

Hospital Safety Connection, October 16, 2003

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The owners of Regency Place Care Center, a Baton Rouge, LA, nursing home where an unsupervised 87-year-old woman was strangled by a wheelchair seat belt, agreed on October 2 to pay $750,000 to settle federal charges, the Associated Press reports.

General Health System agreed to stay out of the nursing home business for seven years as part of the deal. The company denies any wrongdoing or liability.

The charges alleged General Health violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicaid and Medicare for deficient care and services it never provided. The settlement is the largest of its kind in the nation, following a federal and state investigation that found serious problems in resident care and supervision at Regency Place.

The woman died in January 2002 after slumping in her wheelchair at Regency Place, a 128-bed long-term care and skilled nursing facility. General Health was so deficient in supervision, staffing, recordkeeping, safety, security, and physical well-being of the residents that it was fraudulent to bill Medicaid and Medicare for those services.

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