After we broke the news that the the State of Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration suspended the nursing home license of Destin Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, the story has been picked up by nearly every local media outlet in the area.
Now, there have been some changes to the Executive Order that suspended their license operations.
Shortly after the imposition of the Emergency Order, a Manager of LaVie Care Centers LLC, the ultimate parent in the ownership chain of the Facility, called the Agency and relayed that immediate corrective action would be taken.
- Since the imposition of the Emergency Order, the Agency has monitored the Facility on a daily basis and will continue to conduct monitoring as appropriate.
On April 20, 2022, the Manager met with Agency management where he indicated that the Facility’s CEO had been replaced. At that time, the new Interim CEO and the new Interim Chief Nursing Officer were presented.
- The Manager maintained that the Facility was addressing the issues of understaffing and was implementing a process to ensure that the understaffing issues at the Facility would not re-occur.
The three representatives emphasized the difficulty the Facility was encountering with the relocation of more than 100 residents from the Destin area and the impact that the discharges would have on the residents and their family members.
- The information available to the Agency shows that there are approximately 40 to 50 nursing home beds currently available in this county.
Through its daily monitoring process, the Agency has confirmed the increase of temporary agency staff at the Facility. At the moment of this new Executive Order, the Facility is no longer understaffed.
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“Whether the staffing issue has been permanently corrected so that the Facility will be in compliance for the long term remains to be determined,” wrote State of Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration. “At the current time, however, temporary protective measures have been put in place to at least address the present immediacy of the danger to the point where the suspension date of the license may be briefly extended in order to better accommodate the safe and orderly discharge of the nursing home residents.”
In making this decision, the Agency has taken into consideration:
- The nature and number of clients
- The availability and location of acceptable alternative placements
- The ability of the licensee to continue providing care to the nursing home residents.
Unfortunately, the Facility census has decreased little since the imposition of the Emergency Order. None of the decrease was due to the transfer of a resident to another nursing home. According to the updated Order, the Facility “must act with great urgency and expedite the resident discharge process.”
As a condition of this extension, Destin Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center shall expedite the resident discharges and provide the Agency with status reports on a daily basis. They will also have to maintain a log on all residents noting all actions the Facility has taken to discharge each resident.
The State of Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration says they will continue to monitor Destin Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center on a regular basis to determine compliance with the regulations governing nursing homes.
The Emergency Suspension Order has been amended so that the effective date of the suspension is May 2, 2022, at 5:00 p.m., with the conditions set forth above.
