Jackson Free Press

On Tuesday, Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes proposed a new ordinance imposing fines and jail time for people found guilty of neglect or mistreatment of residents of small nursing homes, often referred to as "personal-care homes."

"We're going to have to use police power to deal with the issues of patients being treated inhumanely. You've got to hold the owner of the personal care home responsible," Stokes said. "They're the people getting paid and making money off of (patients)."

The Mississippi State Department of Health defines personal-care homes as facilities that assist residents by performing one or more of the activities of daily living, including bathing, walking, excretory functions, feeding, personal grooming and dressing. The state also demands strict standards regarding bedroom, living-room and dining-area locations and size, as well as bathroom facility, laundry upkeep and cleanliness.

None of those Department of Health standards apply, however, to personal-care homes containing fewer than three patients, said Nancy Whitehead of the department's Regulation and Licensure division.

"If you have a problem, you have to call the Department of Human Services, but there are no regulations on them," she said.

The city ordinance, which Council President Frank Bluntson put into the council Planning Committee for further debate, imposes a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for mistreatment of patients and could result in the termination of a personal-care home privilege license.

Stokes introduced the ordinance following a June request by the Capital Neighborhood Association for the city to impose more restrictions on personal-care homes within the city's corporate limits.

"We need checks and balances," association member Cassandra Welchlin told the Jackson Free Press last week. "... [M]any of the residents in these homes are not being cared for. ... We have seen residents from (some) personal-care homes in our neighborhoods begging for food, trying to barter for shoes, asking for clothes."

Welchlin said if the council imposed an R-5 or special-use zone requirement, similar to zoning requirements for nursing homes, city leaders would have an opportunity to scrutinize and approve the permits.

"Right now there's nothing, no oversight to slow the expansion of personal-care homes," Welchlin said. "This ordinance change gives a legal voice and an enforcement mechanism to the community and the city."

Arthur Brown, manager and director of Alpha and Omega Personal-Care Home, denied that residents at his facility had to go to the soup kitchens for food.

"All our clients, if they want to walk up there they can go eat at the soup kitchens, but all our meals are here. We feed our clients three times day, and they get extra food when they want it," Brown said. "They're just trying to keep more personal-care homes from opening up, and they're just making up things."
Despite Brown's assurance, arrests and convictions of personal-care homeowners in the Jackson area repeatedly make the news.

In May, the attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit arrested Jackson personal-care home employee Eugenia Johnson for culpable negligent manslaughter and one count of felony abuse of a vulnerable adult in the 
Jan. 2 death of Janice Hollins, who died of complications due to hyperthermia. Her indictment claims Johnson threw water on Hollins and placed her "into an unheated bedroom with an opening in the broken window pane and in which room the ambient temperature was below freezing." The personal care home, according to the office of Attorney General Jim Hood, had no electricity at the time of Hollins' death.

A grand jury also indicted Stephanie Fields, the owner of the personal-care home where Johnson worked, with 16 counts, including one count of accessory after the fact in Hollins' death. Fields allegedly changed the victim's clothes and moved her body to a different room after her death. Fields' bond hearing is slated for August 5, while no court date is currently set for Johnson.

Hood said his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit receives 1,600 complaints a year, and has about 200 open investigations on abuse and theft connected to unlicensed care homes.

"If you're taking care of people in a home anywhere, whether it is a nursing home or anything, it should be a requirement that it be licensed," Hood said.

Previous Comments

ID

158640

Comment

Yeah, see. Stokes ain't so bad.

Author

jbreland

Date

2010-07-15T12:28:33-06:00