UPPER NAZARETH TWP., Pa.- Northampton County’s Gracedale nursing home faces two new citations from the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH).
The citations were discussed Wednesday during the first meeting of the new Gracedale Oversight Committee, which was established by County Council in a 6-3 vote in July.
The exact details about what prompted the citations aren’t clear; the DOH’s website is several weeks behind in updating inspection reports. The most recent report listed is from August 10.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Gracedale Administrator Michelle Morton told the committee the two deficiencies, discovered during an inspection on September 10, were rated “G-level,” meaning, according to state standards, harm was caused to one or a limited number of nursing home residents.
Morton didn’t offer additional details, but a slide shown during the meeting referenced choking and a fall with injury.
Northampton County Commissioner David Holland asked why council hadn’t been notified of the inspection and deficiencies prior to the meeting.
County Executive Tara Zrinski conceded it got lost in the shuffle in the reassigning of duties from Director of Human Services Sue Wandalowski to Tom Carson, the new head of Continuum of Care, the department created specifically to oversee Gracedale.
“We are really doing our best to try to get ahead of everything, and we have been organizing the team,” Zrinski said.
Holland said, beyond the communication breakdown, he was more concerned about how the new citations will impact Gracedale’s chances of being elevated from its provisional II license status.
“I was encouraged that we were moving along and when we had the next survey that the provisional II was looking like it was going to be mitigated in some way, but now it’s probably not,” said Holland.
Gracedale was downgraded to a one-star rating on Medicare.gov and given a six-month provisional I license by the state following an incident last July in which a nurse allegedly assaulted a patient, as well as several violation notices issued by the DOH. It was later downgraded again to provisional II.
Commissioner Theresa Fadem noted that the 2027 county budget proposal asks for a $12 million contribution to Gracedale; she wondered what would happen if Gracedale lost its state license entirely.
“I don’t understand what is going on here. We’re throwing money at a problem that… we could just lose Gracedale,” Fadem said. “What is happening?”
“We have to move forward,” Zrinski responded. “If we just think that we are going to lose our license and we act in that way, then we will. And we will not. We need to fix the problems that are there. And the problems that are there are getting fixed.”
The meeting clocked in at a little more than two hours and thirty minutes, with the committee hearing from Carson, Morton and Zrinski on everything from staffing, decreasing the facility’s dependence on agency nurses, salaries, and how to better market the nursing home.
Zrinski acknowledged the challenges ahead. “Every day is a different fire. And we as a team keep addressing those fires,” she said. “We think we’re going two steps forward, then we go a step back.”
The oversight committee will meet again in December.