Nursing Home Fined $50,000 by State in ’92 : Ventura: The Victoria Care Center received four citations, including a $30,000 penalty for patient neglect, a report says.

State health inspectors fined a Ventura nursing home more than $50,000 last year, the 13th highest amount of fines levied against any California nursing home in 1992, a health care advocacy group said.

The Victoria Care Center, a 188-bed home where rates start at $95 per day, received four state citations last year: three for poor resident care and one for deliberately keeping inaccurate records on patients, according to the nonprofit California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

“They’re all fairly serious violations,” said David Seubert, a manager with the San Francisco-based group. “That puts a little red light in front of me saying this facility has some problems.”

The information was published in the group’s first annual report card on California’s 1,228 nursing homes. The report analyzed the 1,812 citations issued by the state Department of Health Services for violations of state health regulations.

No other nursing homes in Ventura County made the group’s list of the top 20 violators.

In one citation issued in September, the state fined the Everglades Street nursing home $30,000 for three counts of neglect against a patient: not treating the patient’s bedsores, failing to diagnose that the person was dehydrated and malnourished, and not removing staples that had been inserted into the patient’s hip.

That patient later died in a hospital, Seubert said.

Officials at the state Department of Health Services in Ventura, which monitors nursing homes in the county, confirmed that citations were issued in 1992 against Victoria Care Center.

But Health Services Department Supervisor Bill Jennings declined to comment on the case because the nursing home has appealed the citations to Superior Court.

Victoria Care Center, which is in a meticulously landscaped, newer building with a pink-and-gray hotel-like lobby, opened in July, 1991.

It is partially owned by Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura and is managed by a Canoga Park firm called Sign of the Dove, which also runs two other Los Angeles Area nursing homes.

A Sign of the Dove employee confirmed that the company is appealing all of the citations.

“They’re not true,” office worker Tersa Rudow said.

Rudow said the charges stemmed from complaints by a former employee who was fired from her job as a dietary worker.

After she was fired, the woman used information she obtained from friends still working at Victoria Care Center to make complaints to state health officials, Rudow said.

“Disgruntled employees like to call the health department,” she said. “She called the health department every day.”

The state issued all of the citations during September and October.

In addition to the charges surrounding the patient who suffered bedsores, the state also levied a $15,000 fine against Victoria Care Center for failing to diagnose that a resident had suffered a broken hip in a fall, according to the nursing home reform group.

Inspectors also charged Victoria Care Center $3,000 for failing to examine the condition of a patient who had fallen four times. Such an examination could have determined whether the resident needed a wheelchair or had a medical problem, Seubert said.

And on Oct. 19, the state fined Victoria Care $2,500, charging that the home’s nursing director had ordered three nurses to omit references to a patient’s broken leg in the resident’s records.

Seubert said his group cannot determine if the charges relate to one patient or four because the state conceals the identity of patients to protect their privacy.

Although none of the charges suggested that patients died at the nursing home as the result of poor care, Seubert said the citations may indicate that there is not enough staff at Victoria Care Center to properly care for residents.

If a patient suffered bedsores and dehydration, for example, that is a sign of neglect, he said.

“Residents have to be moved,” he said. “They have to be repositioned.”

In addition, he said, nursing home staff also need to make sure patients eat and drink enough, because dehydration and poor nourishment can contribute to bedsores, he said. “The skin gets fragile,” he said.

In the report card on California nursing homes, Seubert’s group cited high staff turnover--88.9%--as a major problem in the industry.

At Victoria Care Center, administrator Raquel Haas declined to comment on the citations because she has been at the nursing home only three months. And another administrator, John Boerger, began working there three days ago, Haas said.