Staff spent time looking into residents’ concerns
By Vicky Wedig
Staff Writer
None of the 120 investigations conducted at Lakeland Health Care Center last year resulted in state surveys.
Nursing home Administrator Bernadette Janiszewski gave the facility’s 2016 compliance report to the Lakeland Health Care Center board of Trustees last week.
The report shows the nursing home investigated 120 matters in 2016 and reported 50 of them to the state. None of those reports results in a state survey or a deficiency from the state.
Janiszewski said the nursing home investigates concerns residents or their family members raise such as allegations of improper conduct by staff or peer-to-peer matters in which a resident touches another resident, for example. Any time a resident falls, an investigation is conducted, she said.
“We don’t take those lightly,” she said.
Janiszewski said the scope of the investigations has increased from years past when a review of a matter involved witnesses and complainants filling out forms that staff reviewed and drew a conclusion from. Now, social workers meet with residents and staff to ask more probing questions about matters and look for patterns of complaints – do a complainant’s neighbors have the same concerns, for example.
“If someone has concerns about a CNA, does anyone else have concerns about that CNA?” Janiszewski said.
She said staff are spending twice as much time as in years past conducting investigations, and a typical investigation today takes two to five days.
“It just takes longer to thoroughly investigate because of the face-to-face,” she said.
Janiszewski said even with a high number of dementia patients, staff must look into all of their concerns and can’t assume the resident’s memory is to blame.
A resident might believe someone stole their wallet or their socks, and staff must fully investigate even if a theft is unlikely, she said. If a resident says a staff member is rough with them, an investigation must be done.
The nursing home is required to report any falls, any incidents that result in injury, any peer-to-peer matters and any thefts to the state, Janiszewski said.
