Pennsylvania Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Blog
We’ve been keeping track of the developments in the story of alleged abuse that occurred last month at the Quadrangle Nursing Facility in Delaware County, PA. This week, the Haverford-Havertown Patch (Haverford.Patch.com) reported that the facility’s license has been restored on a temporary basis.
According the online article, the director of communications of the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare (DPW), Michael Race, is quoted as saying, “DPW reached a legal settlement agreement, formalized this (Thursday afternoon), with Quadrangle’s operator (Sunrise) to issues a six-month provisional license (as opposed to a standard, one-year license) and they have agree to make some major changes to Quadrangle’s operations under the terms of the agreement.”
Some of the changes that will be made are:
A designated manager for each shift responsible for managing the dementia care unit.
Those managers must take a leadership training course and annually afterwards.
All staff members of the dementia care unit will receive performance evaluations from their immediate supervisors to assess their skills and empathy towards the patients.
A new interview technique to determine if applicants being interviewed for a position at Quadrangle has experience, skills and empathy, among other things, to properly care for the patients.
Race continued by saying, “This agreement will allow Quadrangle to continue operating under continued monitoring. If at any time DPW feels they are not working in good faith to abide by the agreement, the provisional license can be revoked. Our primary concern is, and will remain, the safety and well-being of residents, and we feel this agreement is in the best interests of those residents.”
The Quadrangle’s license was revoked on April 29 when a hidden camera installed by a resident’s family caught 3 Quadrangle employees allegedly taunting a 78-year-old dementia patient. Sunrise Senior Living, the owners of the Quadrangle, filed an appeal the same day their license was revoked, saying it was an “isolated incident.”