Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
It is essential to develop elopement risk prevention procedures which include but are not limited to: elopement risk assessments administered upon admission, elopement risk assessments administered periodically or upon realistic concern that a resident has become an elopement risk, and/or development and implementation of elopement prevention plan which is then integrated into resident care. Compliance Officers should confer with the Quality Assurance Performance Committee to ensure that elopement risk prevention is an active part of resident care.
After receiving four citations from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (WDHS) a Wisconsin assisted living facility reached the deadline that was given to them to file an appeal. When contacted by the news media, the facility was not forthcoming with any plans to appeal; consequently, under the terms of the Notice of Violation, the facility is not allowed to accept new residents and must pay a $4,200 assessment.
The incident causing the security concern involved an 84-year-old resident with dementia, who was previously identified as being at risk for elopement, and who was found dead outside of the facility last December due to hypothermia. The resident’s family reported that it was the facility’s marketing and promotion of providing special care for persons with dementia that caused them to relocate the woman from the “traditional nursing home” she was at to the facility in question.
The WDHS documented that the assisted living facility had records indicating that the woman had wandered through the facility and that they realized she was a risk for elopement. Yet, on the night she eloped from the facility, the doors were propped open and no alarms were activated.
An advocate from the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Alliance of Wisconsin, reported that “the state does not have concrete requirements for differences in practices at assisted living facilities that specialize in dementia.” He also suggested that if a facility says it “provides specialized care for people with dementia” there is an expectation that the facility will provide that specialized care. Another part of the problem in this case he pointed out is that the state does not have stated requirements for what that specialized care is. However, the advocate pointed out that there should be security for the residents in any assisted living facility-doors with alarms need to be monitored and when an alarm goes off it must be checked.
Another aspect being taken into consideration is that this facility has had numerous violations from early 2016 to this recent notice of violation.
