After investigating a complaint filed against the Crown Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation, a 200-bed facility located in Cortland, New York, the Department of Health (DOH) determined that the facility failed to perform CPR on a resident who was found unresponsive in her room in May 2012. According to the DOH report, although the resident suffered from dementia and terminal lung cancer, she indicated in a signed document that she wished to be resuscitated in an emergency.
On May 6, 2012, the resident was vomiting bile and had a fever. She also complained of stomach pain, and a CNA indicated that the resident’s speech was “garbled.” The CNA also indicated that the resident’s skin was bluish in appearance. Over a period of two hours, the resident rang her bell 27 times and asked staff members to have her taken to the hospital. A nurse who did not assess the patient called a physician who stated that the resident should remain at the nursing home. DOH investigators determined that the nursing facility repeatedly ignored the patient’s requests for medical care.
On May 7, 2012, a CNA found the resident unresponsive in her room at 3:50 a.m. The CNA told a nurse that the resident had “passed.” The nurse called the supervisor and did not begin CPR immediately. The nurse told a DOH investigator that he decide not to begin CPR because the resident was “too dead” and would have been in a “vegetative state” if she survived. However, when the supervisor arrived in the patient’s room, the supervisor directed her staff members to immediately begin CPR. When the supervisor called the patient’s daughter, the supervisor told the daughter that her mother had died and asked for permission to stop CPR. When the daughter stated that she wanted staff members to stop performing CPR, the supervisor then called a nurse practitioner and informed him of the daughter’s request. The nurse practitioner ordered that staff members stop all life-saving measures. When an ambulance arrived three minutes later, EMT’s restarted CPR after learning that the elderly woman had requested that life-saving measures be performed on her in the event of an emergency. The woman was then transferred to the hospital.
In another incident that occurred over a year later, a CNA was arrested for stealing from a resident. In July 2013, Jodi Doran, a former CNA at the facility, stole $30 in cash from a resident’s wallet. In December 2013, Doran pled guilty to the theft in Cortland City Court. She was given a conditional discharge for the offense, and she was sentenced to 50 hours of community service.
