California's second-largest nursing home chain agreed Wednesday to pay $1.3 million to the state to settle civil allegations that it provided negligent care to scores of frail patients, including two who died.
The agreement resolved a lawsuit against Pleasant Care Corp., a La Canada Flintridge firm that owns 30 nursing homes in California, 10 of them in Los Angeles County. It marked a victory in state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's effort to aggressively penalize negligent nursing home operators, a tactic previous state prosecutors have not used. The settlement came in the third major legal action taken by Lockyer's office against a large nursing home chain since he took office in 1999.
The suit accused Pleasant Care of a "pattern of poor quality of care that we found permeated their operations statewide," said Collin Wong-Martinusen, who directs Lockyer's Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse. The case was lodged under the state Unfair Business Practices Act.
"Our investigation revealed that Pleasant Care Corp. grossly failed to fulfill their patient stewardship responsibility, and as a result, some of the defendants' patients suffered needless harm," he said.
Separately, Pleasant Care is expected to plead no contest today in Napa County Superior Court to misdemeanor criminal charges filed by Lockyer's office. The company's Northern California subsidiary is charged with five counts of elder abuse and one count of violating state patient-care regulations.
Pleasant Care officials could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Emmanuel I. Bernabe, who has owned or had a major stake in the company's nursing homes, donated $67,300 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger early last year, before the criminal charges were filed.
The basis for the civil action was more than 160 regulatory violations cited by the state Department of Health Services over the last five years. Brenda Klutz, the state health department official who oversees nursing homes, said last year that the company had "serious compliance problems."
In one case in 2003, a resident whose airway became blocked during a seizure died at a Pleasant Care home in Ukiah because a suction machine was broken, according to the attorney general's office.
In 2004, a resident at a Novato facility died from a pressure sore that employees allowed to worsen. A coroner concluded that the patient suffered "abominable wound-care management," Wong-Martinusen said.
