Albany<\/a>, violated the False Claims Act between January 2018 and December 2023 by providing grossly substandard care while collecting federal and state Medicaid dollars, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office of the Northern District.<\/p>\nState inspections revealed the facility failed to consistently provide adequate nursing staff, protect residents from significant medication errors, or properly deliver respiratory and tracheostomy care and suctioning. In one survey, the New York State Department of Health determined the facility inadequately supervised three residents, jeopardizing their health or safety.<\/p>\n
The health department placed St. Margaret\u2019s Center in immediate jeopardy status for over a month in 2022. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services subsequently added the facility to its Special Focus Facility list, which identifies nursing homes nationwide with histories of serious quality problems.<\/p>\n
The facility admitted its compliance program failed to meet statutory requirements. The compliance officer testified under oath that they had \u201cno idea\u201d how to identify potential risks associated with caring for medically fragile infants and children and was unaware that the facility had been placed in immediate jeopardy status. The compliance program did not include quality of care as a potential risk area until March 2023, after the government investigation began.<\/p>\n
As part of the settlement, St. Margaret\u2019s Center agreed to a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General that will address quality of care and resident safety.<\/p>\n
Two former employees filed the whistleblower lawsuit that prompted the settlement. They will receive approximately $247,000 of the settlement proceeds. <\/p>\n
The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Northern District of New York and the New York Attorney General\u2019s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit jointly investigated the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Upstate NY nursing home that serves chronically ill and disabled children has agreed to pay $1.3 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-132947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-new-york-state","12":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}