A state agency said yesterday that it has restricted a Winston-Salem assisted-living home to a provisional license for "substantially failing to comply" with regulations.
Since January 2009, the adult-care licensure section of the N.C. Division of Health Service Regulation has sent three statements of deficiencies to the operators of Reynolds House at 2900 Reynolds Park Road The latest was issued Jan. 15, 2010.
The home was notified Friday of the decision to downgrade its license from full to provisional. The agency, since Feb. 22, has suspended new admissions to the home.
On Monday, Reynolds House officials filed a petition with the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings challenging the suspension. It requests a hearing and the appointment of an administrative-law judge. It also has plans to appeal the provisional-license decision.
The officials said in the petition that with the decision, the licensure section exceeded its authority and jurisdiction. They accuse the agency of erroneously and unlawfully determining that the home is violating state regulations, not taking into account previous corrections of noncompliance issues, and holding it up to a "higher level of scrutiny" than similar assisted-living homes.
The officials said that conditions at the home "were not detrimental to the health and safety of the residents." As a result, it said that the agency's decision has harmed the home's reputation.
The Winston-Salem Journal first reported on the deficiencies Feb. 11.
The home, which has 121 beds, was found in violation of four rules during a state inspection on Jan. 15. The categories of the Type B violations were health care; nutrition and food safety, such as patient diet; medication administration; and patients' rights.
The state defines a Type B violation as "an identified condition which impacts the quality of care of the residents in the adult-care home." The violation comes into play because the condition has not been fixed by the center after the state had given it "a reasonable period of time to correct."
The operators of the home can be fined up to $400 a day for each day the center fails to provide evidence of the corrections.
The state's letter was addressed to Clifford Hemingway, listed as the executive director of Winston-Salem Holdings LLC, the licensee for the home.
Ken Hodges, the president and chief executive of America's Living Centers LLC, said that the state's case against Reynolds House is confusing. America's Living Centers, based in Marion, is the parent company of Reynolds House and 21 other assisted-living centers in the state.
"I've never known the state to issue a provisional license as the result of a Type B violation, and I don't understand their reasoning now," Hodges said. "If we had uncorrected citations, they would have converted them into Type A violations and began giving us mandatory penalties.
"We have not been afforded any opportunity to address these issues with the state."
The provisional license will remain in effect through at least June 9 "unless a change in conditions warrants further action," the agency said.
The home has an opportunity to bring its operations into compliance during that time.
"In many instances, the correction involves staff training and evidence of improvement of what they were cited for," said Jim Jones, an agency spokesman.
Although the provisional license can be extended by another 90 days, the state said that "careful consideration will be given to whether or not the facility will continue to be licensed after June 9." The home must show it has made "substantial progress toward remedying the licensing deficiencies" for an extension to be granted.
The state does not allow an assisted-living home to operate under a provisional license for more than 180 days.
rcraver@wsjournal.com
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