Most residents in this NC nursing home have coronavirus. Lawyers plead for intervention.
Lawyers for residents of a Rowan County nursing home wracked by COVID-19 asked a court on Tuesday to review the facility’s policies on staffing and hygiene to guard against further neglect.
The request for court intervention is part of a new lawsuit filed against The Citadel Salisbury, home to the state’s worst nursing home cluster of the disease.
Inside the for-profit facility, 144 people have tested positive for the coronavirus illness, N.C. officials have said. Rowan County reports that 16 COVID-19 deaths have occurred at The Citadel.
Buttressed by new sworn statements by some of The Citadel’s residents and employees, the new complaint accuses the facility’s management, owners and corporate leaders of bungling the nursing home’s response to the disease, then attempting to hide the dimensions of the outbreak from their clients and staff.
According the lawsuit, The Citadel “actively lied” to one family by telling them a resident had tested negative for COVID-19 when, in fact, the results had come back positive. The nursing home also lied to patients about whether they were even ill, the lawsuit claims.
The complaint includes multiple affidavits by desperate or grieving family members who say they tried for days to learn about the health of elderly loved ones but could not get The Citadel staff to return calls or even pick up the phone.
In their own sworn statements, residents of the facility — where, families say, private rooms cost up to $11,000 a month — complained of feces- and urine-stained showers.
Margaret Blackwell, a resident who says she left The Citadel after being hospitalized for eight days with COVID-19, said in her affidavit that nurses rarely wore masks and communal activities were allowed to continue even “when everyone was getting sick.”
The defendants include Citadel administrator Sherri Stoltzfus, and its corporate owner, Accordius Health of Englewood, N.J. Accordius owns almost 60 nursing homes, including several in the Charlotte area, court documents show.
Accordius CEO Kim Morrow of Bradenton, Fla., who is also named by the complaint, told the Observer on Tuesday that the Citadel Salisbury had emergency plans in place a month before the first case of COVID-19 surfaced in the facility.
“It is unfortunate that there has been so much misinformation put out by a source clearly not familiar with the facts of what’s been going on inside this building,” Morrow said. “We are devoting all of our resources to caring for our residents and ensuring our staff has the necessary equipment and resources. We will allow our lawyers to respond to the allegations that have been made.”
Multiple sworn statements, however, by residents, their loved ones and nursing home workers paint a portrait of fear, neglect and denial.
Lawsuit’s original plaintiff has died from COVID-19
A state report released Monday said the 160-bed facility had 144 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — the highest number of any nursing home in the state.
In a statement to the Observer, the legal team from Salisbury and Raleigh said the new complaint filed in Rowan County was necessary, in part, because the plaintiff of the original case, Marjorie Garvin, died Monday night. She’d been diagnosed with COVID-19.
The lawyers said they are not asking for money beyond legal fees. Instead, they said, they hope the courts will force The Citadel to comply with health regulations and state law and better protect its customers, staff and the community at large.
“We felt we had no choice but to file this suit in order to protect the ... elderly population and those dedicated to caring for them,” Salisbury attorney Mona Lisa Wallace said.
Raleigh attorney Steve Gugenheim, a specialist in prosecuting nursing home abuse and neglect, said the lawsuit hopes to force The Citadel to hire an adequate staff to deal with the crisis, then properly equip and train them.
‘Aunt Dot’ is at the funeral home
The Citadel Salisbury outbreak has made Rowan County, northeast of Charlotte, one of the state’s worst hot spots for COVID-19.
The county ranks 21st in population, but fifth in the number of confirmed cases of the virus, the lawsuit says.
Tuesday’s complaint alleges that the nursing home has continued to admit new residents despite the outbreak, and that one new resident died from the disease within two weeks of moving in.
In another instance, a patient who had succumbed to the disease was left in the room until the next morning, the complaint alleges.
In a third case, Ronald Barber, whose great aunt, Dorothy “Aunt Dot” Cleveland, lived at The Citadel, said he received an April 15 call from a friend at a Salisbury funeral home asking “when I would come in to meet with them.”
When Barber expressed confusion, the friend told him his aunt had died the day before.
“I was in shock,” Barber said in an affidavit. “I never received a call from the Citadel to even alert me of any dire condition, much less tell me she had passed away ... No one from the Citadel even called me to tell that she had tested positive.”
Another week would pass before the funeral home received Cleveland’s death certificate and Barber — and the funeral home — would learn that the coronavirus had killed his aunt.
24 hours straight
The accompanying motion for relief asks the courts to require the nursing home to follow state rules on infection control and staffing, among other demands.
Up to now, according to the complaint, employees have not been given “the most basic protection and education about COVID-19.”
One Citadel nurse, whose name was redacted from her affidavit and who says she still quarantining after being diagnosed with the disease, said even after the nursing home was locked down, residents were allowed to play bingo or smoke together outside. None were staying 6 feet apart, the nurse’s affidavit says.
Other allegations in the lawsuit include:
▪ That employees who had tested positive for the virus were permitted to return to work without completing mandatory quarantines. One employee who called in sick on a Tuesday, worked Wednesday and Thursday, then tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday.
▪ This month, as the disease swept through the facility, employees were required to work double or extra shifts, often with “unmanageable workloads.” One employee was responsible for 52 residents on one shift. At one point, according to the complaint, the facility’s director of nursing worked 24 hours in a row at one point.
This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 4:17 PM.
