EASTON, Pa. – Northampton County officials are addressing a grand jury report on safety concerns at Gracedale nursing home.<\/p>\n
Map: Gracedale Nursing Home \u2014 Upper Nazareth Township, Pa.<\/p>\n
District Attorney Stephen Baratta held a news conference on the report Thursday.<\/p>\n
He described instances of violence, poor communication, and a lack of security at the facility.<\/p>\n
The report stems from an incident last year, when investigators say a Gracedale nurse assaulted a patient, claiming the victim had ‘demons’ inside her.<\/p>\n
Baratta described the scene police walked into.<\/p>\n
“They discovered the nurse stuffing rags and her hands in the mouth… blood around the bed,”\u00a0Baratta said.<\/p>\n
The grand jury report says multiple patients in the room with the victim tried to call for help, but those calls went unanswered.<\/p>\n
The DA says, during the investigation, more safety concerns were raised, along with reports of bullying and pay discrepancies.<\/p>\n
At the\u00a0news conference, Baratta laid out the\u00a0grand jury report’s recommendations.<\/p>\n
The report says the home could reduce dependency on outside agencies. He noted that less than half of the nursing staff are county employees.<\/p>\n
It also recommended creating a liaison position. The person would oversee Gracedale independent of the administrative staff and report to the county executive and council.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said he hoped the report would spur discussion and debate in county government.<\/p>\n
After Baratta spoke,\u00a0Northampton County Executive Tara Zrinski, in a separate briefing, said the county would review the report and address weaknesses in Gracedale’s operations.<\/p>\n
She said the county would work to strengthen quality assurance, ensure patient and staff safety, and plan for the home’s long-term future.<\/p>\n
She said the county had already started taking corrective actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – Northampton County officials are addressing a grand jury report on safety concerns at Gracedale nursing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,6290,5750,434],"class_list":["post-283132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-easton-area","tag-nazareth-northampton-area","tag-northampton-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}