On December 12, 2009, the Star Tribune reported that Extendicare’s Robbinsdale Rehab and Care Center, in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, has lost federal assistance for new patients “because of errors and the failure in care that included those that led to two patient deaths.” Click here to access the Star Tribune article. The article reports that “Robbinsdale Rehab has far more violations that most MInnesota facilities, which were cited for an average of 10 deficiencies in 2008. Inspectors found 19 violations at Robbinsdale Rehab in 2007, 25 in 2008 and 37 so far in 2009.”
Mistakes by Robbinsdale Rehab’s employees involved the deaths of two residents. One resident “was showing signs of a possible heart attack” but “staff members failed to quickly notify her doctor, even though the facility’s medical director acknowledged that the resident was displaying four “red flags” of distress. The resident was found dead in her bed.”
The second resident was found shaking and unresponsive in his wheelchair in Robbinsdale Rehab’s dining room.” Alarmed staff members immediately reported the incident tonurses, but no one called an ambulance for five hours.” The resident died on the way to the hospital.”
Other mistakes at the Robbinsdale Rehab nursing home included “the mishandling of narcotic painkillers, involving seven residents. One of those residents was taken to the emergency room … after a nursing home employee mistakenly gave him dangerously high doses of painkillers… A subsequent investigation determined that 120 tablets of Oxycodone were missing from the nursing home’s allotment for the resident.” This is not the first problem for an Extendicare nursing home, in Minnesota or elsewhere around the country.
