Nursing home board mum after disbanded
Ducey dissolved group after Republic investigation found felon was allowed to run nursing home where 15 died
Members of Arizona’s nursing home board appeared to be in denial during their first meeting since Gov. Doug Ducey announced he was shutting down their organization for failing to protect residents.
The seven members said next to nothing about the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 1282, which would have reauthorized the board until 2029. They just carried on with business as usual for nearly four hours Monday, proceeding to launch 10 new investigations relating to assisted living facilities and making plans with one manager for a year in the future.
The bill was listed on the meeting agenda, so members could have discussed it. But the only reference was a statement by the board’s executive director, Sabrina Khan, who simply stated
that the bill was vetoed.
Citing The Arizona Republic’s “disturbing and heartbreaking investigation” about the board’s failures, Ducey announced last week his plans to disband the Arizona Board of Examiners of Nursing Care Institution Administrators and Assisted Living Facility Managers.
The Republic investigation revealed members approved a felon – Larry Michael Rasmussen – to run the Granite Creek Health and Rehabilitation nursing home in February 2020. Four months later, he forced employees who were sick with COVID-19 to show up for work. More than 50 residents got infected with the disease and at least 15 died at the Prescott facility.
Ducey wrote in a letter that the Arizona Department of Health Services will take over the duties of the nursing home board.
“It’s time for accountability and new leadership to supervise these facilities,” he wrote. “Our seniors — these are our grandmothers and grandfathers — deserve nothing less.”
Board members Ken Kidder and Ted Ihrman wouldn’t comment after the meeting Monday. Nor would the vice president, Charles Seal-Villafranca.
When asked specifically about Ducey condemning the board for failing in its duty, Seal-Villafranca became testy and raised his voice.
“Again, I’m not going to comment,” he said.
Board member Susan Archer told The Republic that she thinks Ducey is making a mistake. The Legislature should be the one to command action if the board needs to change or be more restrictive, she said.
Archer added that she still wouldn’t speak about decisions she’s made as a board member, which would include approving Rasmussen’s license last year.
The Arizona Board of Examiners of Nursing Care Institution Administrators and Assisted Living Facility Managers was established in 1975 to license nursing home administrators to meet federal Medicaid requirements, and in 1990 expanded to certify assistedliving facility managers.
The board’s mission under state law is to protect the health, welfare and safety of the public by licensing nursing home administrators and assisted-living facility managers.
Ducey spokesperson C.J. Karamargin told The Republic on Monday that ADHS has the systems in place to take over because it already licenses speech and hearing professionals, midwives and laser technicians.
“We have a target date of when DHS will take over responsibility of early to mid-summer,” he said.
Starting to ask tough questions
Just before the pandemic began, the board approved Rasmussen’s license to run Granite Creek after just six minutes of softball questions and friendly banter. He had two felony convictions for fraud from 2007 and less than a year of experience working in anything related to health care.
Few details came up during that meeting. No one asked him about a stolen $1.7 million check from Walgreen to a pharmaceutical company that police said he deposited. No one asked him why he told investors he was working on a housing project when he didn’t even have the license to legally build homes.
No one asked him about court orders he had to follow, or anything about his time working for an education company that closed after it stiffed students out of federal loan money.
Rasmussen blamed his crimes on an overseas business partner who supposedly took money he collected from others and disappeared. He boasted that he paid people back but didn’t mention that he was court-ordered to pay restitution.
Only one board member, Nina Louis, voted against Rasmussen’s license. Louis is no longer with the board because she changed jobs.
Four candidates planning to manage long-term care facilities got very different treatment Monday during the board’s meeting.
“What have you learned about yourself when presented with a very stressful situation and how might you deal with it if something happens again if you’re put under extreme stress?” Member Kidder asked a woman seeking an administrator license whose exhusband had accused her of a crime in the midst of their divorce.
A judge later dismissed the case against her.
The board approved the woman’s license and moved on to the next candidate, who was brought to tears as members interrogated her for shoplifting charges she incurred in the mid-2000s.
Unlike Rasmussen, the woman was asked what she learned from her mistakes. And unlike his case, one of the members pulled up records and pointed out that the woman stole more than just a dress when she claimed that’s all she stole.
In fact, she stole merchandise worth more than $500.
The board went into executive session over another candidate with two DUIs whose story changed as they interviewed her.
Seal-Villafranca attempted to deny her a license, but the rest of the board opted to give her a second chance with a year of probation.
The board denied another candidate who had been convicted for stealing books back from a family who didn’t pay him for them. He neglected to mention a different arrest two years prior.
Seal-Villafranca said the omission spoke to the candidate’s “moral turpitude.”
No one questioned Rasmussen’s moral turpitude in February 2020.
Bonnie Eldridge wonders if her mother would still be alive if they had.
‘It was a big deal to me’
Frances Frossard was admitted to Granite Creek for rehab last summer after she fell and broke her arm in three places.
Like so many families The Republic has interviewed, Bonnie struggled to reach her mother or get any information about how she was doing. The phone in her mom’s room wasn’t close enough for her to reach. And somehow her cellphone broke while she was there.
When Bonnie could get staff on the phone, sometimes they’d give her status updates on other peoples’ loved ones – mixing up who it was that she was calling about.
Bonnie could visit her mom through the window. That was it.
“The staff could come in with COVID, but you couldn’t go in without COVID to see your family,” she said.
Bonnie would deliver things to her mother that were never given to her. Clothing she purchased that her mother could more easily put on with her broken arm went missing.
But above all, staff never set up her appointment with the surgeon who needed to fix her arm. For three weeks, her mother suffered in pain.
Rasmussen once called Bonnie from his car and promised to make that appointment.
“He assured me that everything was going to be fine,” she said. “Everything was going to get taken care of.”
She never heard from him again. The appointment was never made.
When Bonnie started getting the robocalls about the growing COVID-19 outbreak at Granite Creek, she said staff would try to assure her that everything was OK.
“Like it wasn’t going to be a big deal,” she said. “It was a big deal to me.”
Fearing the virus, Bonnie pulled her mom out of the facility, which sent her home with other people’s clothes.
Bonnie spent a precious hour and a half driving her to a different facility in Flagstaff. When they arrived, staff came to wheel her into the building. Before Bonnie was done collecting her mother’s things, she was gone.
She never got to say goodbye. Her mother died of COVID-19 three nights after being transferred to the ICU.
Bonnie said Ducey did the right thing in shutting down the board.
“I’ve been feeling like I did something wrong because I had a say in her care but when it all boils down to it, it was this idiot that let these employees come in that should have never been coming in when they were sick,” she said. “That’s a death sentence for so many old people.”