Pickets Assail Nursing Care Chain, Cite Abuse Claims : Protest: State sanctions are noted. But Sherman Oaks firm says it is being singled out unfairly.

Two dozen protesters picketed the Sherman Oaks headquarters of a nursing home chain Tuesday, accusing the firm of neglecting its elderly patients.

Golden State Health Centers Inc. and its 15 nursing homes were hit with dozens of citations and $300,000 in fines by the state in 1993 and 1994, said officials of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, the group that staged the protest.

“Why (Golden State)? . . . I’ll tell you why,” said Pat McGinnis, executive director of the San Francisco-based nursing home reform group, as sign-wielding demonstrators marched in front of the firm’s office on Ventura Boulevard. “They have citation after citation for patient abuse and patient neglect.”

Protesters complained that the state has collected only a small fraction of the fines. Pointing out that about $60 million of the company’s $75 million in annual revenue is paid by state and federal health care programs, they said taxpayers are being cheated as a result of the inadequate care the firm provides.

“The government is giving them all this money and not effectively enforcing laws,” said Kim Kelley, special projects coordinator for the reform group.

But Sol Goldner, Golden State’s vice president and chief financial officer, said his company’s compliance record is good. “Quite frankly, we don’t understand (the protest), because we run some of the finest facilities in the state of California, and perhaps in the nation,” he said.

Considered a medium-sized chain, Golden State has 10 nursing homes in the Los Angeles area.

Kelley said Golden State is the first nursing home owner to face a protest by her group, but probably not the last. She said the idea of targeting specific operators followed the anti-regulatory fallout from last November’s state and federal elections.

“We’re keeping an eye out for facilities that have higher-than-average citations and fines,” Kelley said.

But Goldner said his firm was unfairly singled out, saying that most of the chain’s citations and fines involved two homes in Bakersfield and San Diego that the firm plucked from bankruptcy and has invested large sums in to improve.

And while company officials acknowledged that they have paid only $39,000 of the penalties, they said some of the fines are under appeal and others were canceled when violations were corrected, as is routinely done.

Victor Arkin, who runs the state nursing home inspection program in Los Angeles County, said the company generally “falls right in the middle” of nursing home operators in the county. “In some instances, their facilities have fewer than average deficiencies, and there are a couple of facilities we do have concerns about.”