State takes over nursing home in central Kansas

 

December 26, 2018



PEABODY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas officials are taking over a nursing home where inspectors found missing narcotics and more than $240,000 in bills that were more than four months overdue.

Anonymous complaints prompted the state to send inspectors to Westview Manor of Peabody, a 45-bed facility in Marion County. The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services wrote in court papers filed this month that contractors stopped providing staff and nursing supplies to Westview over past-due balances, according to the filing.

One staff member reported paychecks bouncing twice, The Wichita Eagle reports . Several broken toilets couldn't be fixed because "there was no money available to buy replacement parts." One in the women's shower room had been broken for months but residents were using it anyway, causing "a foul odor" to linger in the air, the court filing said.

Inspectors also reported that 119 hydrocodone tablets prescribed to one resident were missing and that there wasn't evidence that unused narcotics prescribed to three other residents were disposed of properly. The court filing also described broken floor tiles, exposed electrical wires and lights that hadn't been replaced.


A takeover of Westview "is appropriate and necessary," court records say, because residents' lives would be endangered if the staff who care for them and the vendors who deliver essential goods and services such as food quit because they have not been paid.

Westview Manor is run by Franklin Healthcare of Peabody, which is owned by Julie and Douglas Mittleider. An attorney representing the Mittleiders and their companies hasn't returned phone or email messages from The Eagle.


Westview Manor is the latest financially insolvent nursing facility taken over by the state. In an average year, the state takes legal control of one or two. But so far this year, the state has stepped in at 22 skilled nursing homes experiencing money troubles.

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Information from: The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, http://www.kansas.com

 

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