Facility fined over workers’ safety
At a nursing home in the southeast Colorado town of Rocky Ford, residents grabbed, kicked, bit and punched at staff members, who suffered cuts and bruises, according to a newly released federal investigation.
As a result, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration this week issued a citation and slapped the nursing home, Pioneer Health Care Center, with a more than $9,000 fine for violating safety standards by failing to protect its workers better.
The nursing home has three weeks to decide whether to contest the penalties. If it accepts the penalties, the nursing home must find a way to fix the problems — by installing more security cameras and security alarms, removing dangerous items from the rooms of patients prone to violent behavior, conducting training for workers and making sure shifts are fully staffed, among other recommendations made in OSHA’s report.
“Employers are responsible for providing employees a safe and healthy workplace,” David Nelson, the area director for OSHA’s office in Englewood, said in a statement. “Pioneer Health Care Center must understand that their employees’ safety is important.”
OSHA’s report said the incidents of violence occurred around Aug. 7 last year and “at times prior.” The report does not provide any specific details about the incidents or how many occurred other than to say that, “Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), were exposed to incidents of violent behavior by residents that have resulted in bites, sprains, broken skin, bruising, scratches, soft tissue trauma, and injuries to the head and torso from punches, kicks, and forceful grabs.”
An OSHA inspection record shows that investigators opened their case following a complaint.
Pioneer Health Care Center has had problems before. A man who was a patient there died in 2010 following what an expert later concluded were 16 facilityacquired infections and bed sores. A jury in 2012 found the nursing home to blame and awarded the man’s family $3.2 million. However, state regulators did not find any deficiencies in the way the nursing home handled the man’s care.
In April, state regulators inspected Pioneer Health Care Center and founds problems with security, training and sanitation. But, in follow-up inspections about a month before OSHA opened its case, the state concluded that the nursing home had corrected all of those problems, according to online inspection records.