The Onondaga Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing has been accused of nursing home violations following an inspection by state regulators.

According to a Post-Standard article, the Onondaga Center was purchased in 2017 by a Manhattan-headquartered corporation seeking to increase its portfolio of like facilities. This campus, once known as The Crossings, is now part of Centers Health Care chain of 53 nursing homes in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Onondaga—an 80 bed unit—was subject to an inspection in February of this year, which led to citations for multiple nursing home violations secondary to limited staffing with no readily-available administrative presence.

The Post-Standard reports that the purported administrator of record lived in a different state than the Onondaga Center and didn’t maintain weekend hours. The named nursing home violations were believed to be linked to gross understaffing, and the elder care campus was fined $22,000 by the State of New York.

Reported Nursing Home Violations

The February inspection reported that several diabetic patients were not being given insulin in a timely fashion, according to the Post-Standard. Additionally, inspectors noted other medications that were equally vital to the physical well-being of certain residents were not being distributed regularly. All these deficits appeared to be related to the facility simply not having enough shift staff available.

All told, there were 24 citations for nursing home violations given as a result of the visit by regulatory personnel. Some of the citations issued were related to deficiencies that had not been corrected from the last inspection.

Inspectors found the staff to patient ratio was two or three to 35-40. Of the complications marked down, getting patients out of bed in the morning or at least turned regularly to prevent bed sores was grossly delayed, getting elderly showered and ready for the day was compromised, and the distribution of lunch trays on the day of inspection was noted to just be getting started at 1:30 pm, leaving the seniors going hungry.

Other nursing home violations noted included the failure to care for bed sores with proper wound management protocol. Seven residents were found to be in need of this care.

Inspectors reported that intravenous fluids were being denied patients that needed them because of the lack of credentialed nursing staff capable of starting an IV. One patient was allegedly taken to the hospital because of dehydration.

Centers Health Care came to its own defense regarding the nursing home violations in a public statement in which they indicated that there is a statewide health care staffing crisis. The need for qualified caregivers has risen, according to the company, but the pool of available people has not.

Despite this statement regarding apparent lack of caregivers from which to hire, the Onondaga Center was reinspected by state authorities two months later and found to have more than adequate staffing levels to meet the needs of the residents.