The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Medicare and Medicaid Services division fined two Andover nursing homes tens of thousands of dollars for safety and health deficiencies uncovered during inspections in recent years.
While most of the deficiencies at Academy Manor and Bear Mountain at Andover were labeled as causing “minimal harm or potential for actually harm” to residents, they were the only Andover nursing homes with deficiencies in a ProPublica database covering nursing inspections from 2019 to present.
Andover News has asked both nursing homes for comment and will update this story when they respond.
Breakdown of Violations at Bear Mountain at Andover
Bear Mountain at Andover had a total of 12 deficiencies and one infection-related deficiency in the four inspections conducted since October 2018. None of the inspections stemmed from complaints.
The division fined Bear Mountain $12,155 following the most recent inspection on May 31, 2022. During that visit, inspectors found staff failed to properly groom residents and violated food safety standards. Both of those violations were deemed as causing “minimal harm or potential for actual harm.”
Breakdown of Violations at Academy Manor
Academy Manor was fined $65,683 following a Dec. 15 inspection where surveyors found one violation of rules to prevent infections and 19 deficiencies, including five that resulted in actual harm to residents. The nursing home on Morton Street was also fined $47,993 after a June 25, 2021 inspection, when surveyors found staff had not followed through with testing orders for a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, diabetes, hypertension, anemia, chronic kidney disease and a history of falls. Both inspection reports said Academy Manor had also failed to follow federal rules for preventing infections. The payment for June 2021 fine was suspended.
Inspectors also visited the home on Feb. 14 following a complaint and found a nurse told a certified nurse aide to give pain medication to a resident, even after the CNA told the nurse she did not believe she was allowed to administer medications. While inspectors determined Academy Manor had violated federal rules, no fines were issued.
The complaint was one of four that led to inspections at Academy Manor since November 2019. In the seven inspections during that time frame, Academy Manor had 55 total deficiencies and three infection-related deficiencies.
Ongoing Issues at Academy Manor
A lawsuit filed in Essex Superior in January accuses Academy Manor and Apple Valley Center in Ayer, as well as Genesis Healthcare LLC, their Pennsylvania-based parent company, of negligence that resulted in the death of 96-year-old Viola Thayer Whittemore. Whittermore was injured in a fall on Aug. 27 at the Ayer nursing home and died following a second fall at Academy Manor in Andover on Sept. 17, 2020.
The defendants were “grossly negligent for leaving [Whittemore] unattended, unsupervised, causing her to fall, resulting in death,” the 10-count complaint said. As a result, Whittemore “suffered bodily injuries and conscious pain and suffering.”
While Medicare’s overall rating of Bear Mountain is four out of five stars, the agency gave Academy Manor an overall rating of one star. The ratings are based on health inspections, staffing, and quality measures and are based on each nursing home’s current health inspection and 2 prior inspections, as well as findings from the most recent 3 years of complaint inspections and 3 years of infection control inspections.
Academy Manors’s quality measures rating was four stars, or above average, and its staffing was three stars, or average. But the nursing home received a health inspection rating of one star, or “much below average.”
During the past three years, Academy Manor has had 21 citations, above the Massachusetts average of 12 citations and the federal average of 8.9. Bear Mountain, by comparison, has only had two citations in the past three years.