Lt. Gov. McCarthy Visits Regents Point Retirement Home on Fact-Finding Tour

Equipped with private apartments, laundry rooms, swimming pool and beauty parlors, the Regents Point retirement home in Irvine is hardly what one would call a “typical” rest home. But the home was one of the stops Friday on a fact-finding tour of retirement and convalescent homes in the state by Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy.

McCarthy, who chaired an advisory committee to the Little Hoover Commission, which spearheaded legislation to correct abuses in many retirement homes, is on a statewide tour of homes to see if the new laws, passed earlier this year to protect the elderly, are working.

Signed into law this March by Gov. George Deukmejian, the landmark legislation stiffens penalties for negligence in patient care and mandates fines for falsifying patient records. It also prohibits nursing homes from discriminating against Medi-Cal patients and requires improvements in the training of state nursing home inspectors.

$1,215 a Month

During his brief visit to the home, which has about 330 residents living in accommodations ranging from small apartments to two-bedroom villas that cost as much as $1,215 a month, McCarthy toured the facility and engaged in short chats with some of the residents.

In addition to monthly rents, residents of the 3-year-old Irvine facility, operated by Glendale-based Southern California Presbyterian Homes, pay one-time “accommodation fees” that range from $49,000 to $166,000, depending on the type of quarters they occupy.

Although Regents Point is a long way from some of the facilities that the Little Hoover Commission uncovered during its 1983 study of the state’s 1,200 nursing homes, McCarthy said Friday that too many elderly citizens continue to live in deplorable conditions.

The Irvine home is the third of a dozen retirement homes McCarthy plans to visit before December, when he will present his findings to the commission. The latest tour, he said, has turned up evidence of abuses at other rest homes, including inadequate or poorly skilled staffing, slipshod management and poor nutrition.

McCarthy, who decided to include the Irvine home in his tour because he wanted to visit a “good” rest home, said he probably will visit another Orange County home between now and December, though “it’s likely we’ll schedule a facility that’s not as attractive.”

Rick Ruiz, McCarthy’s assistant press secretary, said no plans are in the works to visit the Bristol Care Center, a Santa Ana home that has come under fire for alleged abuses and violations of health and safety regulations, “but we may, depending on our schedule.”