Iowa's Glenwood Resource Center Cited - Again!
We discussed Glenwood Resource Center's inability to provide quality care for its residents in previous blogs. Glenwood was hit with its third - and largest - fine this year in the amount of $27,500. The fine would have been significantly less except that Iowa triples fines for serious offense violations. In this instance, the State of Iowa found that the facility provided inadequate nursing care by failing to provide physician-ordered services.
This time, the facility failed to provide a resident with physician-ordered oxygen. This incident involved two different shifts and two different nurses. Inspectors discovered that neither nurse noticed that a patient's oxygen tank was turned off for four and a half hours.
Four weeks later, the same resident was found in bed, pointing to his/her chest. The resident's fingers were blue. The patient's oxygen line was disconnected. The nurse suctioned the resident's airway and reconnected the oxygen. This same resident had been hospitalized in the past year for a collapsed lung and bowel obstruction.
The spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Human Services said that "caretaker mistakes are not acceptable".
Glenwood was fined in April 2008 after a nurse failed to take action in response to respiratory distress, which resulted in a resident death. The facility was also fined in August 2008 for hundreds of medication errors and other problems.
