A Hilo nursing home facing loss of Medicare certification instead achieved a flawless inspection.
A Hilo nursing home facing loss of Medicare certification instead achieved a flawless inspection.
Legacy Hilo Rehabilitation and Nursing Center got preliminary results Friday. Its status was confirmed this week by the Office of Health Care Assurance at the state Department of Health.
“There were zero outstanding deficiencies and zero new deficiencies,” a spokeswoman said.
The facility — home to about four dozen people — has been under scrutiny by state surveyors who inspect for compliance with federal regulations. It would have lost Medicare certification March 19 if it hadn’t improved care. But Legacy did — and created action plans to prevent future deficiencies.
“Staff demonstrated their commitment to our mission to provide quality care,” co-owner Ben Meeker said by email from California. “Daily, they supported one another, continuously nurtured, engaged and demonstrated their love of the residents on a daily basis by giving of their time and themselves unselfishly.”
Keith Ridley, Office of Health Care Assurance chief, said normal oversight will continue via unannounced inspections.
The reasons a home loses compliance vary, Ridley said. For Legacy, “a combination of factors led to their non-compliance, including the need for staff training in specific areas.”
The nursing home received 27 citations for poor care in September; that number dropped to 16 in November and then to three in December, continuing a trend of improving care. The facility’s certification remained at risk until high-caliber care, and zero deficiencies, were documented last week.
“We were facing a potential closure … but, fortunately, we didn’t come to that point,” Legacy Administrator Johnalyn Nosaka told Big Island Video News. “If that happened, then we would have had to transport our patients to different facilities to care for them — around the island, around the state.”
Meeker said cognitively alert residents and family “were very aware of the situation that the facility faced.”
They were “supportive and committed to the facility, were encouraging and awaited to hear that the facility was back in compliance,” Meeker said.
Oversight staff told Ridley no nursing home in Hawaii actually lost Medicare certification “in recent memory.”
Meeker said Legacy wants regulators “to continue the excellent work that they do.”
“We at Legacy Hilo would like to thank our residents and their families for their continued support and their belief in our facility,” he said. Attaining zero deficiencies, “was the direct result of a committed and talented staff. We cannot thank them enough.”
Email Jeff Hansel at jhansel@hawaiitribune-herald.com.