4 nursing homes in state get lowest rating

Four Washington state facilities have landed on the federal government's list of worst nursing homes.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday made public the names of "Special Focus Facilities" -- including nursing homes in Auburn, Centralia, Longview and Spokane -- that get closer oversight.

To make it onto that watch list, a nursing home would have been faulted for more problems than the average home, had serious problems such as giving residents improper medications or failing to prevent neglect or abuse, or had a sustained pattern of problems.

CMS released a list of 52 underperforming facilities in November and provided a fuller account of 131 nursing homes Tuesday. Half of those homes showed improvement, while 16 percent voluntarily left or were terminated from Medicare and Medicaid. There are about 16,400 nursing homes nationwide, with roughly 240 in Washington state.

North Auburn Rehabilitation and Health Center in Auburn was just added to the focus list. Allyson Jenkins, the facility's administrator, said in a statement: "Our staff and leadership team has been proactive in addressing the inconsistencies in our regulatory history."

She said North Auburn has a strong leadership team in place and has invested in resources to improve care and retrain and educate staff.

Frontier Rehabilitation & Extended Care Center in Longview and Franklin Hills Health & Rehabilitation Center in Spokane were listed as facilities that showed no improvement.

Evergreen Centralia Health & Rehabilitation in Centralia was on the special focus facilities list for eight months before leaving the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The facility "left the program in good standing with the Medicare and Medicaid programs," said Jason Smith, general counsel for EHC Management, which also oversees Frontier in Longview.

Smith said Frontier did not know it was on the focus list until this month because CMS operated the program in "secrecy." "The first notification that we got was from the state this month," he said. Frontier has been on the focus list for 37 months, according to CMS.

In a statement, Frontier said a recent survey "indicates that the facility continues to make significant progress in correcting any outstanding deficiencies."

Franklin Hills officials could not be reached for comment.

CMS inspectors make unannounced visits to nursing homes once every nine to 15 months. They're looking to see whether residents get proper medicine, assistance with daily activities, and appropriate treatment for problems such as bedsores.

Facilities that end up on the agency's special focus list are inspected twice as often as their counterparts.

Nursing homes on the focus list have a history of failing to comply with quality of care and a history of practices that have resulted in harm to residents in the most recent three state surveys, said Bett Schlemmer, King County administrator for the state Department of Social and Health Services' residential care services.

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