State Sues Former Owners of Hospital : South Coast Care Owes Fines Resulting From Patient Deaths

Two elderly patients died after receiving inadequate care last year at a Kearny Mesa convalescent hospital, state health officials allege in a civil lawsuit seeking to enforce payment of $30,000 in fines levied against the hospital’s former operators.

The suit, filed late last week in San Diego County Superior Court, says South Coast Care Corp. of Long Beach engaged in actions while operating Meadowlark Convalescent Hospital that posed “an imminent danger” to the two patients.

The hospital’s owner, Samuel Blasker, assumed operation of the facility on Birmingham Drive from South Coast soon after state investigators conducted an in-depth investigation of patient care problems there early last summer. South Coast subsequently withdrew from nursing home operations in the area, according to Jackie Lincer, a state Department of Health Services administrator in Santa Ana.

A secretary at South Coast’s offices in Long Beach said Monday that Margaret Emery, the company’s president, and Robert Pruett, its registered agent, were not available for comment.

One of the patients who died after treatment at Meadowlark, an 85-year-old senile veteran, had severe bed sores and skin breakdown by the time the nursing home transferred him to a Veterans Administration hospital in July, 1985, according to the lawsuit. He died within a month.

The suit alleges that South Coast retained “Carl A.,” the patient, “even though it knew, or should have known, that it could not provide him with adequate care.”

The other patient, “Aileen M.,” weighed about 60 pounds when she was admitted to Meadowlark in January, 1985, according to the lawsuit--40 to 50 pounds below her ideal weight. She was incontinent but mentally alert. Her left leg had been amputated above the knee.

She continued to lose weight at the hospital, the suit says. When her doctor ordered that she be fed pureed foods, Meadowlark’s staff failed to inform him that she could not receive adequate nutrition from a pureed diet, the suit alleges. By mid-June, 1985, she weighed 52 1/2 pounds; her right foot was gangrenous and she had numerous bed sores. She died July 3.

The suit alleges that South Coast Care “failed to provide this patient with food of the quality and quantity necessary to meet her needs.”

State health officials fined South Coast Care $10,000 last July for each instance of inadequate care. The suit seeks court enforcement of those fines and another $10,000 fine for a nurse call system that was not working when investigators surveyed Meadowlark in July.

Disciplinary action still is pending against South Coast for violations uncovered in a surprise inspection last year of Bristol Care Center in Santa Ana, Lincer said. The Department of Health Services fined Bristol $80,000 after citing it for unsanitary conditions. The nursing home subsequently was sold, Lincer said.

South Coast also operated the San Diego Convalescent Hospital when it was fined last year for violations of nursing standards in the treatment of a 92-year-old man who later died at the facility.