Beaumont nursing home accused of neglience in dispensing woman’s pills

WESTBORO – After her 93-year-old mother died last month following a fall at Beaumont Rehabilitation & Skilled Nursing Center, Susan Forbes was shocked to find that her mother had hidden about 1,000 pills of her medicine, each dose individually wrapped in tissue and tucked in socks inside a pocketbook and a small jewelry box.

She first noticed that her mother, Jean D'Attilio, was hoarding her medicine about nine months earlier, when she began finding pills in her mother's bra. Her mother told her some of the medicine made her nauseous when she took it on an empty stomach. Mrs. Forbes said she spoke with staff at the facility several times about the problem.

All nursing homes, she stressed, should require nurses to watch and make sure patients take their medication. Her mother, who lived with her in Millbury until moving to Beaumont three years ago, also had dementia.

"You can't leave medicine with patients in a cup without knowing they take it. She was taking five or six different medicines, including heart medicine, antidepressants and blood thinners," Mrs. Forbes explained. "I kept finding pills in her bra. I told them several times that if it happened again I was going to go further. It was negligence on the part of the nursing staff."

Mrs. Forbes said when she went to claim her mother's belongings after her death and found the purse and jewelry box stuffed with pills, she showed them to Nicole Croteau, director of nursing, who said, "Oh, my God."

She said representatives of the facility asked to meet with her to get her "feedback."

"I told them it was negligence and they had committed fraud by billing insurance for medicine she didn't consume," said Mrs. Forbes.

She sent a follow-up email on June 18 to members of the administration, including Andrew L. Salmon, whose family owns the nursing home chain. She spoke about the discussion she had regarding the lack of nursing procedure when administering medications. She also noted in the email that she had never received an acknowledgement of her mother's death from Mr. Salmon and that nothing changed after she notified staff about her mother's medicine hoarding.

Mr. Salmon emailed her the following day expressing his condolence and promising "to do whatever we can to address" her concerns.

Corin Cook, Beaumont's spokeswoman, in an emailed statement Monday, said licensed nurses are required to be present when the medication is taken. Medication is never left at the bedside for the patient to self-administer. She said multiple processes are in place to assure medication protocols are followed, including spot checks and yearly documentation and reviews.

"If we have any reason to believe, via a family member or other source, that a patient may not be taking their required medications, we immediately inform all nurses assigned to that patient and provide them with guidance on how to assure continued compliance," Ms. Cook said in the statement. She declined to explain what that guidance is in general.

"That's not working and that's not being done clearly," Mrs. Forbes said when told of the nursing home's statement. She said most of the pills that she found still had pharmaceutical markings on them and did not appear to have been in her mother's mouth.

Ms. D'Attillio moved to Beaumont three years ago after suffering some minor strokes which left her susceptible to falls. On June 3, she fell and died 10 days later at UMass Memorial Medical Center – University Campus in Worcester. Her death certificate lists the cause of death as hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. A right femoral fracture was listed as the other significant condition contributing to death but resulting in underlying cause.

"We did not have an autopsy but her fall which broke her right hip was the reason for death complicated by cardio issues which are part of the result of the trauma caused by the fall and hip surgery," Mrs. Forbes explained.

She said she does not know what, if any, part her mother's failure to take her medicine may have had to do with her death. Her concern, she said, is to help others.

Mrs. Forbes filed complaints with the state Department of Public Health and Attorney General Maura Healey's office soon after her mother's death, but had not received a reply. A spokesman for the AG told a reporter on Monday that the agency referred the complaint to DPH which has oversight of nursing homes.

After a reporter emailed DPH Monday morning requesting information, a representative telephoned Mrs. Forbes to obtain her address to send a written acknowledgement of receipt of her complaint.

Later, DPH spokeswoman Marybeth McCabe, said in an email to a reporter that the agency received Mrs. Forbes complaint and was looking into it.

She went on to say: "There are no specific requirements in the nursing scope of practice regulations that a nurse must watch a resident as he or she takes medication."

Mrs. Forbes said there should be specific requirements.

"When you're dealing with nursing home patients with dementia and Alzheimer's, wouldn't you think it is common sense to stand there and take a minute and talk to that patient to make sure the medication went down," Mrs. Forbes said.

She said her mother had been "pretty chipper," for her age.

"I took her every week to get her nails and hair done. They called her the fashionista of the floor," Mrs. Forbes said.

She said she hopes telling her mother's story will help other nursing home residents.

"This isn't at all about money. Money is not going to bring my mom back. It's about what's right," she said. "Elderly people, I find, are not treated the way they should be treated, and some nursing homes take advantage of them. There are people in these nursing homes that don't have advocates and I want to speak for them. Hopefully, this will make a difference. If nothing is said, nothing is going to be corrected, and this needs to be corrected."

Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Westboro has a history of problems involving residents. The facility was among seven nursing homes Attorney General Healey fined $500,000 in March after a major statewide investigation found systemic failures that led to several significant injuries and the deaths of five residents. One was an 89-year-old Westminster woman, a dementia resident at Beaumont who died in 2015 from injuries she suffered during a fall.

The woman's family reached a settlement of more than $1 million after filing a lawsuit against Beaumont. The facility was also fined by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as in the case of the the death of an 85-year-old former Shrewsbury man who fell and died of blunt force head trauma, a month after the Westminster woman died. In both cases, the dementia victims fell after staff allegedly did not maintain devices that were in place to prevent falls.

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