Local officials are responding after a Grand Jury report noted several safety concerns at Gracedale Nursing Home.<\/p>\n
The grand jury investigation was launched in June after a Gracedale staff member allegedly tried to exorcise a demon out of a resident with intellectual disabilities. District Attorney Stephen Baratta said police found the nurse stuffing rags and her hands in the patient\u2019s mouth. Officers received four phone calls from the resident\u2019s roommates before responding, allegedly because Gracedale staff told them they weren\u2019t needed.<\/p>\n
The investigation also revealed 14 deficiency reports from Health and Human Services inspections in 2025. This included \u201cphysical assaults of patients, patient elopements, and failure to provide prescribed medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gracedale has also faced severe staffing shortages. The report notes that at one time, the facility only employed 58% of agency registered nurses, 43% of employed LPNs, and 56% total agency direct care nursing out of the suggested staffing level.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, County Executive Tara Zrinski released a statement emphasizing that Gracedale residents and their families \u201cdeserve honesty from their government, accountability from those entrusted with care, and clear evidence that the County is taking action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gracedale Nursing Home has been in the spotlight often in recent years. The facility\u2019s license was downgraded from Regular to Provisional earlier this year following ongoing struggles with staffing, safety violations, and poor Department of Health ratings.<\/p>\n
In this week\u2019s statement, Zrinski listed several planned actions including strengthening executive oversight and accountability, improving transparency, strengthening quality assurance, and evaluating security operations and emergency response procedures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local officials are responding after a Grand Jury report noted several safety concerns at Gracedale Nursing Home. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-285877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285877","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=285877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}