In a message dated 6/11/08 9:51:30 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> A revealing article about the former owners of the personal care
> facility that used to be at 40th & Pine, and their history of neglect at
> other facilities as well.
>
> http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080611__A_crime__crime__crime__
> crime_.html
>
> Regards,
> John Ellingsworth
>
For those who don't have time to look up the link, I've posted it below
(though the link shows a picture of the gate to her home).
This is the former use of the property now proposed to be the Campus Inn. I
don't remember the neighbors noticing or objecting to the former residents'
plight under to Mrs. Lavin's use. Where were we, when the occupants needed
help?
- Melani Lamond
'A crime, crime, crime, crime'
Squalid care homes owner fined 700G
By KITTY CAPARELLA, MICHAEL HINKELMAN & GLORIA CAMPISI
Philadelphia Daily News
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 215-854-5880 NEVER AGAIN, said the feds, and they meant it.
> Never again will owner Rosalind Lavin nor the managers of her four
> personal-care centers in Philadelphia and Media allow more than 210 residents
> to live
> in what U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan called "appalling" conditions.
> Never again will Lavin or her managers allow residents to lie in vomit or
> feces for days, unattended.
> Never again will Lavin or her managers serve insufficient food to
> residents, like a slice of bologna and a piece of cheese between bread, and
> call it
> nutritious.
> Never again will Lavin or her managers be allowed to ignore the handing out
> of medications, or fail to seek medical care when it's needed for the
> disabled, mentally handicapped and elderly.
> Never again will she or her managers allow residents to wear inadequate or
> soiled clothing, or lie on filthy bed linens.
> Never again will she or her managers allow the physically disabled, the
> mentally handicapped or the elderly to live in grossly inadequate,
> structurally
> unsafe and dangerous firetraps that she called housing.
> And never again will Lavin be able to stuff her pockets and bank accounts
> with residents' Social Security and disability payments to fund her luxurious
> lifestyle - with a multimillion-dollar portfolio of fabulous homes in
> Villanova, Florida and New Jersey, and an aircraft - as alleged in her
> settlement
> agreement with the feds.
> Even as Lavin - a licensed pilot - denied wrongdoing of the above listed
> infractions in her civil settlement yesterday, workers were painting the
> exterior of her posh 14-room mansion beige and pinkish- tan, near the
> swimming pool
> and tennis court in her gated Villanova estate, called "Lionsgate," adorned
> with benches, sculptures and a babbling brook.
> There, workers are about to take on the massive task of painting the gutted
> interior of a first floor wing of the mansion, turning the walls into an
> elegant shade of beige and cream for her about-to-be renovated master-bedroom
> suite.
> For more than eight years, Lavin, 65, and her late husband, Robert, denied
> to city, state and federal authorities that they were aware of what U.S.
> Attorney Patrick Meehan called the "appalling" treatment of residents at her
> four
> personal-care homes, even after three homes were closed.
> The last facility, Ivy Ridge Personal Care Center, on Ridge Avenue near
> Kingsley Street in Roxborough, which had two residents last month, must close
> on
> Aug. 10.
> But now, the long-blond-haired Lavin must pay the feds $700,000 - a drop in
> the bucket to this multimillionaire - as part of the settlement.
> Yesterday, she signed the settlement agreement to never again own or op
> erate a patient-, personal- or residential-care facility, or run a program or
> facility that receives federal health-care funds.
> Lavin owned three personal- care homes - or assisted-living facilities - in
> Philadelphia and one in Media, and Health Horizons, a management corporation
> that ran them, of which she and her late husband were the dominant
> shareholders.
> Besides Ivy Ridge, the other facilities included: Conlyn, 16th and Conlyn
> streets, Fern Rock, and Thoroughgood, at 40th and Pine streets, West
> Philadelphia, both closed in September 2002; and Brookwood, 1027 Ridley Creek
> Road,
> Media, Delaware County, closed in September 2000.
> Neither Lavin nor her attorney, Larry Besnoff, could be reached for
> comment.
> Jadwiga Ruta, a Polish immigrant, still gets angry when she thinks about
> her mentally handicapped daughter's three-day stay in the early '90s at Ivy
> Ridge Personal Care Center, and about Rosalind Lavin.
> "The people who live under her roof, they suffer," the elder Ruta, who now
> lives in Florida with her daughter, said of Lavin. "What she did was a crime,
> crime, crime, crime.
> Ruta said Lavin and her late husband were "making themselves rich from the
> poor people and the handicapped people."
> Her daughter had her to help her, Ruta said, but many of the elderly
> residents of the homes had no family.
> Ruta said that she had paid the Lavins $1,000 for her daughter's care and
> that Lavin had refused to give it back. "I borrowed the money," Ruta said. "I
> really, really, really couldn't afford it. But I thought it would be good for
> her."
> According to a lawsuit filed on the Rutas' behalf, Ruta placed her
> daughter, whom she declined to identify, at Ivy Ridge because Ruta, a
> now-retired
> teacher, had to work.
> Her daughter, then 33, was at the personal-care center just three days when
> Ruta received a call saying that her daughter - who was incompetent - was
> either sick or "faking it," according to a lawsuit filed in August, 1992.
> When Ruta rushed to the home, she found her daughter screaming and crying,
> with a diaper full of feces. The area around her was also covered with feces.
> Mrs. Ruta stayed with her daughter for several hours, trying to clean her
> up, and no one from the home assisted her. She told the Ivy Ridge staff that
> her daughter was ill, but none of the staff responded or even called for
> medical assistance, acording to the suit. They didn't even provide hot water
> for a
> cup of tea, she said.
> After several hours, the mother drove her daughter to a nearby hospital,
> where she was diagnosed with viral gastroenteritis, a fecal impaction and
> dehydration.
> Common Pleas Court upheld a jury verdict that Ivy Ridge was guilty of
> neglect. The young woman was hospitalized for three days, and then her mother
> took
> her home.
> Personal-care homes are assisted-living facilities where residents are
> helped with bathing and dressing, and the taking of medications, but don't
> need
> the kind of round-the-clock, skilled care provided in nursing homes.
> State regulators notified Lavin in October 2006 that they intended to close
> Ivy Ridge because she had failed to address repeated violations.
> In August and October 2006, for example, Ivy Ridge was cited for not having
> enough staff to provide at least one hour of personal care per day to its
> mobile residents.
> Some residents did not have adequate mattresses to sleep on, or lacked
> blinds in their rooms.
> Staff were not trained in first aid or CPR, and the home did not have a
> system in place to identify and document medication errors, the state said.
> Karen Kroh, the state's chief regulator of personal-care homes, said in an
> e-mail yesterday that Ivy Ridge is no longer operating as a personal-care
> home, but as of last month two personal-care residents still lived there, as
> did
> two or three "independent occupants."
> Meehan said that residents of many personal-care homes throughout
> Pennsylvania are "uniquely vulnerable" because of their mental and physical
> disabilities and because they are dependent on others to care for them.
> He pointed out that personal-care homes are not as tightly regulated as
> nursing homes by the state Department of Public Welfare.
> According to Meehan, there were 1,500 personal-care homes in the state last
> year and only 37 state inspectors. He said that 1,200 homes were at one time
> or another operating without a license.
> A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Welfare said yesterday that the
> department has since hired five more inspectors and that all of the state's
> personal-care homes are operating with either a license or a conditional one.
> About 50,000 Pennsylvanians live in personal-care homes. *
>
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