State: Nursing home puts residents at risk
After deaths of two elderly women, Department of Health finds assisted living facility residents at ‘risk for harm, abuse, neglect’
Just after midnight in late December, 91-year-old Myrtle Shryock walked out the back door of her assisted living facility in Edgewood. For 34 minutes, security footage captured her wandering on the property before she vanished from the camera’s range. Caregivers didn’t realize she was missing until 7:30 a.m., and it was another hour before her body was found, “cold and unresponsive,” according to a state report.
Shryock’s death on Dec. 20 came a few months after another death had raised questions about the care of dementia patients at BeeHive Homes of Edgewood. Those incidents and other problems prompted the New Mexico Department of Health to launch an investigation that found the facility’s 30 elderly residents were at “risk for harm, abuse, neglect or exploitation” as a result improper care. A recent report from a January inspection at BeeHive lists 14 violations of state regulations for assisted living homes and $13,600 in penalties.
BeeHive failed to follow its own policy to regularly check on patients, the report says, leaving Shryock and others “who have dementia and wander to be at risk of harm or death.”
The Edgewood Police Department also launched an investigation into Shryock’s death, and it turned over
its results in January to District Attorney Jennifer Padgett. She said this week that her office has conducted interviews with family members and witnesses, and it will examine the Health Department’s investigation — when her office receives it — to determine “whether there is any criminal culpability in the tragic death of Ms. Shryock.”
Among the findings in the Health Department’s report: The home failed to protect patients’ rights, failed to conduct background checks on staff and provide proper training, neglected to evaluate patients’ health and update their care plans, and failed to document medication administered to residents. It also found that hazardous areas and oxygen tanks were left unsecured, creating a fire risk, and that linens were stored in an unhygienic manner.
A complaint filed Oct. 30 with the Health Department alleged improper care at BeeHive Homes in Edgewood contributed to the death of resident Mildred Nanneman. It took the department more than three months to complete an inspection of the facility. In the meantime, Shryock wandered away and died of exposure.
It was another six months before the department reported the results of its investigation to the home. By then, Robin and Pat Markley, the owners of the BeeHive franchise since the early 1990s, had sold it and moved out of state.
There are 140 privately operated franchises of the BeeHive Homes chain of assisted living facilities in the U.S., including 13 in New Mexico. It is unclear who currently owns the franchise in Edgewood.
Allen Shryock, Myrtle Shryock’s son, declined to discuss his mother’s death.
But Kay Wilks of Edgewood, who filed the initial complaint with the Health Department after her mother died at BeeHive in October, said in an interview that she witnessed numerous problems at the facility. “Everybody judges a nursing home by how the food is and what it looks like when you walk in the door,” she said. “But nobody looks any deeper than that.”
The facility, which charged Nanneman $3,800 a month, was considered the best place for aging parents in the area, her daughter said.
The company’s website says it specializes in “memory care” and offers “quality care in a personalized, home-like surrounding.” But Wilks said this was not what she experienced after she brought her mother, then 95, to BeeHive about a year ago.
She said Nanneman, who had dementia, was used as a test patient for new caregivers who were being trained on the job to dress residents and help them move around. Staff turnover seemed common, Wilks added.
She began to notice her mother was often left in an armchair overnight and then developed a blood clot from sitting in the same position for hours on end. And for three weeks, Wilks said, her mother’s thyroid medication went unfilled.
Then, in early October, she said, Nanneman fell from her bed and broke her hip. The bed was supposed to remain low to the ground in case her mother tried to move, Wilks said, and an alarm was supposed to alert caregivers if she tried to get up. But neither of those precautions were in place. Nanneman died 10 days later. In her complaint to the Health Department, Wilks detailed what she found to be inadequate care of her mother. She also noted other issues she witnessed, such as residents falling out of wheelchairs and not receiving timely help, caretakers cursing at residents, and residents shivering and crying beside an open window on a cold day. At times, she claimed, employees would leave the building to smoke or get coffee, “leaving the residents and building unattended.”
The Health Department made similar conclusions in its report dated June 29.
Based on New Mexico law, staff at such facilities are required to undergo background checks. But BeeHive Homes failed to do so for 6 out of 7 caregivers whose records were examined during the January inspection. The staff members interviewed also hadn’t received the required 16 hours of training before providing unsupervised care, the report says.
Medications must be administered by a licensed nurse or other health care professional, but state officials inspecting BeeHive observed an unlicensed caregiver walk into a patient’s room and hand a pill cup to the patient without identifying the medicine inside. The caregiver simply said, “Here,” and then placed the pill in the patient’s mouth with gloved fingers, according to the report.
Additionally, it says, BeeHive staff “failed to maintain a system of records for narcotic medication,” which creates the “potential for theft and abuse by staff.”
Patient health evaluations, required at six-month intervals, were not performed for some residents for up to three years, the report says.
Kenny Vigil, a spokesman for the Health Department, said that any time a facility is found out of compliance, the agency must file a corrective action plan. The department conducts a survey later to “verify the facility is in compliance.”
“We take the health and safety of patients in facilities we license very seriously,” he said.
The Edgewood BeeHive also was investigated following a complaint in 2014, but no deficiencies were found at that time. Inspection reports in 2011 and 2009 cited no violations.
Pat Markley said in an interview this week that the home had passed its last inspection with “flying colors.” When asked if he and Robin Markley sold the business before Jan. 14, the date of the state inspection, he referred questions to his attorney in Albuquerque, Jason Wexler, and facility manager Gerald Hamilton, who is listed online as the owner of BeeHive Homes of Albuquerque. Hamilton did not return messages to comment.
A caregiver who answered the phone at the Edgewood facility confirmed that the Markleys no longer own the home and directed questions to manager Barbara Madrid, who said she was in a meeting and could not comment.
“Those people are so vulnerable,” Wilks said of residents at the facility, many of whom suffer from memory loss. “They can’t speak up for themselves, and they can’t tell their kids what is wrong, because when their kids come to visit, they don’t remember. Which is why I think nursing homes get away with so much.”