The state and four district attorneys have sued the operator of 19 nursing homes, including several in the Bay Area where dozens of patients and employees died of COVID-19, accusing it of “trading people for profits at every turn.”
Mariner Health Care Services has “siphoned off funds necessary for appropriate staffing,” according to the lawsuit filed by the California Department of Justice and the district attorneys of Alameda, Marin, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties.
The unacceptably low staffing levels have resulted in insufficient care, leading to unnecessary leg amputations, bone ulcers, spread of infections and unreported sexual and physical assaults, the suit says.
The suit also alleges Mariner illegally booted residents from its facilities without legal due process or proper discharge procedures in an attempt to free up beds up for new Medicare patients, who bring in more money than those on Medi-Cal. Mariner also falsified information reported to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to boost its ratings, according to the suit.
A spokesperson from Mariner did not respond by deadline to requests for comment about the lawsuit.
While the operator identifies itself as Mariner Health Care on its website, the defendants in the lawsuit are described as a “family” of companies out of Maryland and Georgia that together administer 19 skilled nursing facilities in California, each run by “upwards of a dozen legal entities with various shell entities.”
Among the Bay Area facilities operated by Mariner that had seen deadly outbreaks of COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic was Parkview Healthcare Center in Hayward, which has been sued by the families of patients and recently was fined by state regulators for its handling of the disease.
A list of Mariner’s other Bay Area facilities posted on its website include Almaden Health and Rehabilitation Center and Skyline Healthcare Center in San Jose, Creekside Healthcare Center and Vale Healthcare Center in San Pablo, Driftwood Healthcare centers in Hayward and Santa Cruz, Pine Ridge Care Center in San Rafael, Fremont Healthcare Center in Fremont, Hayward Hills Healthcare Center and Fruitvale Healthcare Center in Oakland .
There are also nine Mariner facilities in Southern California: Autumn Hills Healthcare Center, The Rehabilitation Center of Santa Monica, Glendale Transitional Care Center, Inglewood Healthcare Center, La Crescenta Healthcare Center, Monterey Palms Healthcare Center, Palm Springs Healthcare Center, Santa Monica Healthcare Center and Village Square Healthcare Center.
Hundreds of patients and staff have been sickened with COVID-19 at Mariner nursing homes, and dozens have died. According to data from the state, there were 13 COVID-related deaths at its Fruitvale facility, 12 at its Hayward Hills facility and at least 28 at Skyline Healthcare Center in San Jose.
Some of the allegations in the state’s complaint are similar to those lodged by the families of patients at Mariner’s Parkview Healthcare Center in Hayward last year.
The facility has a history of problems that started long before COVID-19, interviews with some of those family members and court documents uncovered last summer.
The daughter of one Parkview resident told this news organization last year that her father often would call for nurses using his call button and no one would come.
“It was immediately obvious that they were short-staffed,” the daughter, Nancy Sanchez, said then of her father’s stay at Parkview. During his two years there, staff neglected to properly care for wounds, according to the lawsuit he joined as a plaintiff.
Her father, Jose Sanchez, contracted COVID-19 at the facility last year and later died at the hospital.
When COVID-19 swept through nursing homes through much of last year, many of the Parkview families said they worried danger lurked inside because of the conditions.
What state investigators for the Division of Occupational Safety and Health found there seemed to support that.
Cal-OSHA this week fined Parkview Healthcare Center $67,500 for “serious” violations, saying in investigation notes that the facility did not isolate patients with COVID-19 or suspected of having it quickly enough and did not make sure employees wore masks or knew how to properly don protective gear.
The facility also did not sufficiently train employees about infection prevention practices or provide access to any written procedures about infection control, wrote Wendy Hogle-Lui, a compliance officer with Cal-OSHA.
Mariner spokesman Daniel Kramer said Parkview will appeal the citations, noting, “We believe we have been in substantial compliance with all applicable (California) safety and health regulations and we take the health and safety of our workers very seriously.”
He did not respond to follow-up questions about the state’s lawsuit.
The Cal-OSHA investigation was conducted in July 2020, after at least six people had died of COVID-19, as this news organization reported then. According to the agency’s file, the investigation was sparked by those deaths.
Over the course of the pandemic, 18 patients and at least one health care worker at Parkview have died of COVID-19, according to state records, which do not specify the exact number of COVID-19 deaths if it is under 11.
According to the state’s lawsuit, state health investigators have found a total of 1,548 violations of regulations across Mariner’s nursing homes since 2017.
In addition to poor care, the facilities have discharged patients without a 30-day notice — and sometimes no notice at all — and without letting them know why they were being discharged or preparing them with a plan after discharge. The state filed a lawsuit in March for similar violations by another nursing home, Brookdale Senior Living.
In addition to civil penalties for each violation, the state’s complaint against Mariner seeks a court order for Mariner to pay restitution and costs of the lawsuit, as well as for a monitor to ensure compliance with the laws.
