first on decorahnews.com: The State of Iowa fines Aase Haugen Home, but after a reinspection says the home has made the necessary corrections

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has issued a $500 fine against the Aase Haugen nursing home in Decorah for violations to the state's nursing home codes.  But a follow-up inspection late last week has found the nursing home has corrected the violations.

An official of the Department of Inspections and Appeals visit Aase Haugen Homes in late July and found three categories of violations:failure to assist nursing home patients during meal times; failure to follow physician orders in administering medications; and failure to answer residents' call lights within 15 minutes.

The inspector investigated the cases of eight residents to determine whether doctors' orders were being followed correctly—and ruled that in half the cases they were not.  In a case involving a resident with foot health issues, including gangrene, the inspector found nine failures.  In a case involving a resident needing antibiotics administered, the inspector for three failures.  In the case of a resident needing insulin, the inspector found one failure.  In the case of a resident needing eye drops, the inspector found "numerous" failures.

The inspector also ruled that Aase Haugen "failed to provide appropriate dining room assistance in order to meet the individual needs for 10 of 13 residents reviewed."  The inspector said they found cases of residents at the dining room table and sleeping with no staff member present to supervise.

The inspector interviewed residents and checked call light reports and found staff members failed to respond to call lights within 15 minutes four times for one resident, 21 times for another resident, 30 times for a third resident and 37 times for a fourth resident.  Once it took staff 59 minutes to respond to a call light.  Another time a staff member admitted she had answered resident call lights and said she would return in a certain time frame but had not.

Because of the inspector's report, a citation was issued August 19th, imposing the $500 fine. In Iowa between 1,000 to 1,500 complaints are filed each year about nursing homes, with state inspectors upholding the complaints in between 30 to40 percent of the cases.  From July 1st of 2013 to June 30th of 2014, 415 complaints were upheld, according to Department of Health & Human Services spokesperson David Werning.  He says fines ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 are imposed in cases where the violations are thought to possibly be "life-threatening."  Fines ranging from $100 to $500 are imposed for violations that "could have an impact" on residents.  185 such fines were imposed during the 2013 fiscal year.

Aase Haugen Home Jeffrey Schmidt says the facility created a "Plan of Correction" and set to work enacting the recommendations of the inspector.  For instance, the nursing home increased its auditing of call light reports and made a point of auditing those times of the day when the use of the call lights is typically heaviest.  Because of that increasing monitoring, Aase Haugen was able to reduce the number of call lights that took more than 15 minutes for a response from over four percent of all call lights to under one-and-a-half percent.

On Thursday an inspector from the Department of Appeals returned to Aase Haugen Home and told Schmidt the facility had corrected all the issues.  Department of Health & Human Services spokesperson David Werning says the official inspector's report will be issued later this coming week, but he reports the inspector found no problems at Aase Haugen Home.