A
System
Neglect
of
LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES ACROSS OREGON
ABUSE RESIDENTS AND FAIL TO MEET STANDARDS
by Kelly Kenoyer
S
he moved into River Grove Memory
Care in Lane County in October of 2016,
needing a little more rehabilitation and
care before she could go home with her
husband. This 62-year-old woman had
vascular dementia, but her diabetes
was under control and she was able
to walk more than 100 feet without stopping, a feat after
spinal surgery in August 2013.
Her husband hoped that she would be out of the facility
in 6 months with proper care.
Soon after Susan Bliven was admitted, the Oregon
Department of Human Services forced the facility to
restrict admissions. That means the facility was too far
out of compliance with regulations to safely admit new
residents, and the state had intervened to prevent new
residents from coming in.
When last surveyed by DHS on Feb. 9, River Grove
was out of compliance with more than a dozen Oregon
Administrative Rules. The facility was understaffed, the
staff was undertrained, and diet and hydration programs
did not meet standards of frequency, nor did the facility
meet sanitation standards.
Retirement homes are meant to be places where the
elderly can live comfortably. But many facilities in Oregon
are rife with abuse and neglect. Severe understaffing can set
up caregivers for failure, and all it takes is one mistake to kill
a member of this vulnerable community.
There is regulatory oversight on the state and local
level, but legislation written in the 1970s and 1990s caps
the civil penalties, or monetary fines, with which DHS can
reprimand negligent and abusive facilities.
Ana Potter, DHS’s community based care manager,
says, “for example, a fall resulting in a broken hip
requiring hospitalization of a resident where the facility
was substantiated for abuse may result in a fine as low as
$300, with a cap of $500 for most cases of abuse, neglect
or wrongdoing.”
The penalty structure for community based care
facilities has not been substantially updated since 1977.
Unless they are restricted from admitting new
residents, there is little incentive for facilities to change
their policies in order to prevent neglect.
Demitria Haffenreffer, a consultant for River Grove
who has worked in the field for 43 years, says, “I can just
tell you on a national level that civil penalties don’t help.
I don’t know what helps.” She adds, “Their only recourse,
the state’s only recourse, is to restrict admissions.”
Haffenreffer’s consulting company, Haffenreffer &
Associates Inc., helps facilities come into compliance
with regulation.
The owner of River Grove is Terri Waldroff of Benicia,
LLC, a company that owns several other retirement facilities
in and out of state. She says that “when the state came in
to do that survey, they admitted to the team that was here
that they were going to get us. And that’s what they found,
because they chose to.”
Waldroff adds that the families of residents at River
Grove who have complained about conditions are uniquely
unstable. “I’m talking about very dysfunctional families
with mental health issues,” Waldroff says.
As for Susan Bliven, after she moved to River Grove
her tests for hemoglobin A1c “went from a three-year
average of 6.2 or 6.3, and after three months at River
Grove it was 8.4,” according to her husband, Lee Bliven.
The normal A1c range for those without diabetes is 4 to 5.9
percent, and anything over seven percent is concerning in
diabetics. This jump signifies a sudden change from good
to poor control of her glucose levels.
Her husband alleges that the jump came from poor
food quality at River Grove.
Bliven fought for his wife’s well-being. He’s a large
man with a long white beard and glasses, retired at 66. As
a younger man he worked in four different states drilling
water wells, but now in his free time he acts as a volunteer
ombudsman at several other retirement facilities in Lane
County, monitoring the care in the facility and making
sure the residents are happy and healthy.
He kept close contact with the long-term care
ombudsman at River Grove who gathers and reports
complaints of poor care. Bliven continued reporting
inadequate staffing and negligence to the ombudsman
and Adult Protective Services (APS), and visited his wife
almost daily to help take care of her.
“I changed her, I took her to the bathroom, I showered
her a couple times because they didn’t have enough staff
to shower her,” he says. “Anytime I was there I was her
caregiver because there wasn’t enough staff.”
A new administrator, Samantha Borden, took over River
Grove on Feb. 1. Lee kept up his complaints to the facility
and his reports to APS regarding the state of the facility.
Soon after Borden took over River Grove, Lee Bliven
received two letters from the facility claiming that his
behavior was unacceptable. They alleged that he was
making sexual comments to caregivers and that he
frightened staff.
On April 3, Lee Bliven received a phone call from
the administrators at River Grove that they were calling
paramedics to take Susan to the hospital after she had
fallen the previous night.
Bliven has power of attorney over his wife’s financial
and medical decisions, so he has the right to refuse care
on her behalf.
He rushed to the facility to try to stop EMTs from
taking her, as he had scheduled a doctor appointment for
later that afternoon.
Here the two accounts of the incident diverge
somewhat. Borden claims Lee was behaving erratically,
and she feared he might attack her. Lee says he was angry
and claims they were trying to remove his wife from the
property against his and her consent and were refusing to
provide her care. What is clear, however, is that the police
were called.
Borden claims that Bliven had locked himself inside
with two caregivers, though Bliven says no one else
was in the room while he provided care to his wife. The
Eugene Police Department event reports for this incident
do not mention any caregivers trapped in the room with
him, though they do call the situation “a bit of a dispute
over patient care.”
When Bliven left his wife’s room, he saw two police
cars and three officers outside the facility.
Borden says, “Lee Bliven exited the building, he had
his hands in the air saying ‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving, I’m
leaving,’ the cops asked him to stop — he kept walking.”
The officers detained Bliven. “They grabbed my arms
and held them behind my back,” he says. “They forced me
down on the curb.”
Lee says he was held for 45 minutes before being
released, and was told that he was banned from the facility
where his wife lived. The EPD event report says Borden did
not want Bliven “on the property any more and did not want
him contacting the staff in any way, including by phone.”
The facility did not file charges and refused to provide
an incident report regarding what happened on April 3.
Former staff at the facility say that the allegations of
Lee’s inappropriate behaviors aren’t true. Erica Adams, who
was fired in March after working for two years in various
positions at River Grove, including lead caregiver, says she
never heard from a single caregiver about inappropriate
comments or behavior from Bliven.
“From my understanding, the management there
thought that he was too nosy, and they didn’t want to deal
with him,” Adams says.
eugeneweekly.com • May 4, 2017
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