Illinois Nursing Home Lawyer Weighs In On The Problems At Embassy Health Care Center: Part 1
Embassy Health Care Center, a nursing home facility located in Wilmington, Illinois, is a for-proft nursing home facility with 169 certified beds. Owned by Jack L. Rajchenback, Nachshon Draimain, and Samuel Lipshitz, this facility is rated overall as a one-star facility, which is "much below average", according to the rating system instituted by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). This terrible rating is due primarily to poor results on Health Inspections.
The average number of health deficiencies found at Illinois nursing home facilities is 8, which is the same average number of health deficiencies found nationwide. During the last three complaint reporting periods, Embassy Health Care Center has consistently performed substantially worse than the Illinois average, racking up nearly twice the number of deficiencies for average facilities in Illinois and nationwide. For the 2010 reporting period, the nursing home inspectors cited the facility for 15 separate deficiencies while 14 deficiencies were found in the 2009 reporting period. And, in 2008, a whopping 20 deficiencies were assessed against this facililty.
Ask any honest Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer and they will admit that most nursing homes are going to have some deficiencies and many nursing homes are good about correcting any identified problems within a short period of time. However, there are a few nursing homes that experience substantially more problems than other nursing homes with more serious citations. These nursing homes tend to present with a pattern of problems that have existed over a long period of time. When state inspectors find a facility meeting this criteria, the nursing home is often placed on what is known as the Special Focus Facility list and inspectors for CMS institute new criteria for the facility. For instance, once a nursing home lands on the Special Focus Facility list, the facility will be inspected twice a year, rather than the normal one time per year survey inspection. The longer problems exist, the more stringent enforcement actions, such as monetary fines, will be. According to CMS, within 18-24 months after a facility is placed on the Special Focus Facility list, the outcome will be one of three things:
(1) The best case scenario is that the facility makes significant strides in improvement and
graduates from the SFF program.
(2) The facility is provided with additional time to continue to make improvements under the
SFF program.
(3) The nursing home is terminated from Medicare and Medicaid programs. While a facility
may continue to operate without the benefit of these programs, usually a facility closes
upon loss of funding.
Due to its consistently poor performance, Embassy Health Care Center has resided on the "Special Focus Facility" list maintained by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for 43 months. It is currently known as a facility that has shown no improvement.
At all times, nursing homes are required to meet 180 regulatory standards designed to protect nursing home residents. These standards, covered under Health Inspections, cover a vast area, from medication management, protection from physical or mental abuse and inadequate care, to the safe storage and preparation of food. Illinois Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Attorney David Terry examined the past three inspection periods for Embassy Health Care Center in the area of Health Inspections and saw numerous facility deficiencies.
