The Alabama Department of Public Health is recommending that a Montgomery assisted living facility where a resident was left alone in a hot van for nearly six hours and later died earlier this summer have its license revoked.
Elmcroft of Halcyon is facing a negligence lawsuit from the family of 83-year-old Doris Mitchell, who suffered heat stroke and was placed in a medically induced coma after she was found June 19. Mitchell, who had been left behind in the van after a field trip, was discharged from the hospital July 1 and died at a rehab facility July 16.
An investigation by the state earlier this month found that three employees at Elmcroft of Halcyon falsified documents claiming they saw Mitchell in the facility when in fact she was in the van.
“The Alabama Department of Public Health proposes to revoke the facility's license,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday to AL.com. A hearing on revoking the license is scheduled for Sept. 9 and Sept. 10.
The 48-bed assisted living facility at 1775 Halcyon Blvd. in Montgomery was visited by the health department Aug. 1, when a surveyor found several infractions.
“The deficiencies cited resulted in an unsafe environment with significant harm to one resident and the potential for harm to all residents,” the surveyor wrote in their report.
Among the findings were that three employees “falsified documentation stating they observed [Mitchell] at different times in the buildings while [she] remained on the community van.”
Elmcroft of Halcyon employees were supposed to maintain detailed logs of residents who boarded and disembarked from the facility van and conduct checks for residents before locking the vehicle. But the day Mitchell was left in the van, the driver only looked through the rearview mirror to check for residents. They determined all residents were accounted for because they did not see any residents through the mirror.
An employee also documented that they saw Mitchell at lunch even though her tray was never picked up, while a third wrote that she administered Mitchell’s medication and saw her at the facility when she was actually in the van.
“The facility failed to identify [Mitchell] as missing by not abiding by the van policy, dining policy and medication administration policy,” the investigation found.
JP Sawyer, the attorney representing Mitchell’s family, said there needs to be more oversight of elder care facilities.
“I have seen a lot of bad things happen in facilities like this during my career, but this conduct is the most shocking I have witnessed,” he said in an email to AL.com. “There was clearly a total lack of corporate responsibility by Elmcroft and its parent company, Eclipse Senior Living.”
Eclipse Senior Living said the health and safety of its residents is a top priority.
“We are in the process of preparing a response to the [Health] Department’s findings and remain committed to working with them to resolve these issues,” the company said in a statement. “Even before we received the Department’s findings, we conducted our own internal investigation, engaged a third-party consultant, and have held mandatory retraining for our associates on the applicable protocols and processes. We are prepared to take any additional steps to promote resident safety and deliver quality services.”
