Dateline: October 26, 2006

Medical Center passes rare federal inspection

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

The Medical Center Nursing Home passed a rare federal inspection last week with only two minor deficiencies.

MCNH Administrator Vicky Robertson said five percent of nursing homes are randomly selected each year to be reviewed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and this is the first year anyone can remember the local home having such an inspection.

“We were told to expect as many as 10 deficiencies,” Robertson said. “They didn’t leave a stone unturned.”

But after searching from October 16 to October 19, the federal team found only two items of concern – one for some reports that weren’t up to date and another for medication times.

“They looked at the quality of life, quality of food, and quality of staff and said it was very obvious that our staff cares about our residents,” Robertson said.

Inspectors told Robertson that the community and the hospital board should be very proud of the nursing home.

“They were pretty impressed,” she said. “They said it’s highly unusual to find a facility in a rural area as good as ours.”

The high marks from the federal level come just one month after MCNH received its annual state inspection.

“The state health team found zero deficiencies, and the life safety team found 13 deficiencies,” Robertson said but noted that those deficiencies were not serious.

“One of the state deficiencies was that our plants were too big and that the branches of plants stuck into the ‘egress path,’” Robertson said. “So we had to rearrange all of our plants, but everything major was fine.”

Another infraction the state team found was that the door to the mop closet was not closed when the inspector happened to walk by, she said.