The Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, located on the east end of Long Island, failed to meet minimum standards in a Department of Health deficiency survey dated August 23, 2011. The survey noted issues regarding several areas of care, including proficiency of nurse aides and avoiding significant medication errors.
In large part, the quality of a facility’s nursing staff correlates with the quality of care that a resident receives. Nurses and nurse’s aides interact with and care for residents constantly. For this reason, section 483.75(f) of the CFR states that nurse aides must demonstrate competency in skills necessary to care for the residents’ needs. The DOH found that this level of care was not present in its review of The Hamptons Center. In one instance, a knee separator that had been ordered by a physician was not in place for a resident lying in bed. Separators such as this serve several important functions, among them a higher comfort level for the resident and the prevention of pressure ulcers. Failure to implement the knee separator, contrary to the physician’s orders, posed a potential for more than minimal harm according to the DOH.
Elderly nursing home residents rely on their caregivers for the administration of necessary medications. As such, the CFR provides that it is the duty of the facility to ensure that residents remain free of any significant medication errors. The DOH report documents a resident who went three days without receiving a physician-ordered prescription because it had not been received from the pharmacy. For this particular resident, whose diagnoses included atrial fibrillation (irregular heart beat) and hypertension (high blood pressure), this failure to medicate could have had severe consequences. Heart conditions are serious matters for a patient of any age. In an elderly nursing home resident, this failure to medicate exacerbates the risk of harm to the resident.
To read the full report of deficiencies for Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, see the DOH website.
