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Pike County nursing home faces uncertain future after losing key funding

Lexington Herald-Leader - 2/23/2023

A Pike County nursing home is trying to determine its next steps after a federal agency announced the facility will lose Medicare funding — which in some previous cases has resulted in the closure of nursing homes.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, notified the Parkview Post-Acute and Rehabilitation Center, a 120-bed facility, that its Medicare provider agreement would be terminated this Sunday after the facility “failed to substantially comply with Medicare and Medicaid health and safety participation requirements.”

“While we understand the relocation of residents can be challenging for all parties involved, CMS prioritizes resident safety and care quality,” the federal agency said in a public notice. “We are closely monitoring the relocation of residents to other facilities.”

Bill Taylor, the Parkview Nursing Home administrator, told WYMT in a statement Wednesday the nursing home is trying to work toward an agreement that avoids the relocation of residents.

“The facility is hopeful that CMS will permit a transfer of the facility provider agreement to another operator to avoid the displacement of residents from their home,” Taylor said. “Ownership is cooperating with the state and federal agencies and will work to help ensure the health, safety and well-being of each and every resident.”

Last year, a nursing home in Nicholas County closed after CMS terminated its Medicare provider agreement. However, closure isn’t always guaranteed. After its provider agreement was terminated in 2018, the Grandview Nursing & Rehabilitation Facility in Campbellsville was initially planning to close. But CMS retracted its termination about a month later.

The Parkview nursing home in Pikeville has incurred over $1.26 million in fines — the most of any active facility in Kentucky, a database of nursing home reports maintained by ProPublica showed.

The facility has faced 20 federal fines since 2020 with the most recent coming in August 2022, records on the Medicare website showed.

CMS also administered three denials of Medicare payments to the facility during that time frame. The payment denials are a penalty where the government stops Medicare or Medicaid payments for new residents to the facility until the nursing home corrects whatever actions it was penalized for. The most recent payment denial came last March.

The largest fine, of over $630,000, came in September 2021 on the back of a 160-page report which CMS compiled after the nursing home was inspected. That wide-ranging report captured resident complaints related to the serving of meals, some dietary or medical needs not being met, and reports of abuse from other residents. A payment denial was also handed down as a result of the inspection.

In the past three years, the facility has received 24 citations after infection control inspections and 17 health citations, the Medicare website showed. The average number of health citations for facilities in Kentucky is 4.6.

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