Annandale Healthcare Center failed to tell patients’ families about its huge COVID outbreak
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| Brenda Roozen celebrates a birthday at the Annandale Healthcare Center. |
Since the Annandale Blog began reporting on the problems at the Annandale Healthcare Center – and its huge COVID-19 outbreak – families have reached out to us about their negative experiences.
The AHC, at 6700 Columbia Pike, had the most COVID cases in Virginia (156) and the most deaths (55), according to the Virginia Department of Health. The VDH cited numerous deficiencies at the AHC – such as the failure of staff to wear protective equipment correctly and the failure to screen visitors – that contributed to the outbreak.
Kim Ramos of Haymarket, Va., blames the poor management and inadequate healthcare at AHC for her mother’s premature death from COVID-19.
Desiree Wilkinson of Norfolk, Va., had misgivings about AHC even before the COVID outbreak. After seeing the other articles in the Annandale Blog about the facility, she learned the problems she had with the nursing home, “unfortunately weren’t an isolated issue with us.”
Related story: Problem-plagued Annandale Healthcare Center accepts new patients, prepares for Phase 2
Ramos transferred her mother, Brenda Roozen, to AHC from Regency Care of Arlington in November 2019 because AHC is one of the few nursing homes in the area with a dialysis center.
Although Roozen was happy at AHC, Ramos cites numerous problems at the facility. Roozen was on a strict diet, but the staff began mixing up her meals after Ramos learned that a couple of the food service workers had contracted COVID and their replacements weren’t up to speed. Roozen also observed staff who had stopped wearing masks by the end of the day.
Lack of communication
In December 2019, Roozen was treated in the hospital for a urinary tract infection and in January 2020 was treated for sepsis. When she was sent back to AHC, she was first put into a private room, then on April 11, was moved to a room with a roommate who was coughing.
AHC officials failed to tell Ramos there were COVID cases at the facility. “They were not admitting anything,” she says. “There was no communication.”
While Roozen was at AHC, Ramos and her 19-year-old son brought her food and picked up her laundry to wash at home. “If I knew about COVID, I would never have had my son pick up the laundry,” she says.
Then, when Roozen noticed that several dialysis patients were no longer showing up, she feared they had died of COVID and “was getting nervous about that,” Ramos recalls. At that point, “she just knew” she was likely to get sick and revised her will to include her grandchildren.
Related story: Rep. Connolly calls for investigation of Annandale Healthcare Center following major COVID outbreak
On April 13, AHC officials told Ramos that her mother had a fever and 48 hours later sent her to Inova Fairfax Hospital. It was a nurse at the hospital, not AHC, who informed the family that Roozen had COVID. She was placed on a ventilator and passed away on April 21. She was 69.
“No one called to check up on her,” Ramos says, and when she tried to ask questions, “they blocked my email.” After Roozen died, AHC didn’t even send a condolence card or call the family.
When Ramos went to AHC to pick up her belongings, “no one answered the door or buzzer,” she says. There was a wedge in the door, so she walked right in. “They’re not following protocol” about screening visitors.
“Everything was such a mess,” Ramos says. “They didn’t want to accept any blame.”
With Wilkinson living so far away, she couldn’t visit as much as she would have liked and, as a result, wasn’t able to get a clear sense of what was going on with her mother’s care.
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| Desiree Wilkinson (left) with her mother Sharon Anderson and her stepfather Linwood Anderson. |
“I asked multiple questions multiple times. No one was able to give us answers,” Wilkinson says. No one was able to tell her family whether Anderson was getting better or not. She calls the whole experience “a nightmare.”
No activities
After the COVID outbreak hit AHC, Anderson was “pretty much stuck in her room.” She wasn’t provided speech therapy or physical therapy as promised, and all of the social activities were canceled. Wilkinson doesn’t think her mother had been taken outdoors at all after the outbreak. They didn’t have nurses with dedicated time for individual patients, she says.
Anderson had a ground-floor room with a bed by the window so, when the facility barred visitors during the COVID outbreak, Wilkinson’s brother, who lives in Northern Virginia, was at least able to visit her through the window. Because AHC lost so many items in the laundry, her brother came by to pick up his mother’s laundry and take care of it himself.
During her time at AHC, Wilkinson says her mother seemed “despondent about being there. Her speech became more jumbled and disoriented.”
The family explored moving Anderson to other nursing facilities, but they were either unaffordable, wouldn’t accept her insurance, or couldn’t handle sickle cell disease. “As a family, something never felt right” about AHC, Wilkinson says.
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| Sharon Anderson |
AHC staff told families – in periodic letters and robocalls – that there was COVID at the facility, Wilkinson says, but they didn’t tell families about the extent of the outbreak or that AHC had more COVID cases and deaths than any other nursing home in Virginia.
During Anderson’s stay at AHC, her condition worsened, and she had to be hospitalized twice. Anderson tested negative for COVID and was placed in quarantine at AHC for two weeks after the hospital stays.
After the quarantine, “we in the family thought it was bizarre that they said her room assignment might be different,” Wilkinson says. For older people, “having consistency is key.” To uproot someone and move her personal belongings for no reason didn’t make sense.
Related story: Director of Annandale Healthcare Center replaced
Wilkinson never had a chance to see her mother in her new room before she passed away.
She says “it’s been difficult to get hold of an actual person of authority” at AHC, and it’s been difficult to get her mother’s belongings. When she tried to arrange someone to pick up her mother’s items, she was transferred to other staff and finally to a nurse whose voice mailbox was full.
Wilkinson would rather be with her family, grieving and planning a funeral, than being constantly on the phone trying to track down her mother’s belongings. “They are just material things, but they are the last material things I have for my mother,” she says. “It shouldn’t take so much energy to deal with a simple request.”
AHC eventually gave her some of her mother’s clothing, but several items were missing, including T-shirts with a special meaning for the family.
Wilkinson still hadn’t received anything official on the cause of death. The facility reported that staff found Anderson in her room unresponsive and called 911. “That can mean so many different things,” Wilkinson said. They didn’t say how long it had been since she was last checked.
On the other hand, AHC did not have trouble processing the family’s bill for their mother’s last seven days.
Wilkinson filed a complaint with AHC’s parent company, CommuniCare, on Sept. 23.
These facilities are the waiting rooms for death and not the care giving facilities they pretend to be. My father passed away in one in NY where the staff refused to let me purchase and place a hospital grade HEPA filter with UV-C. He ended up passing away from MRSA. My only sense of satisfaction was that the NY State Attorney General had all the senior leadership including the CFO and my father's pulmonologist PT escorted out of the facility in handcuffs by the State Police. They were indicted for negligence, graft and the death of another patient. Evil human beings not caring for our elderly.
I hope I never have to enter one of these death camps.
Skilled nursing facilities must meet standards set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in order to receive Medicare reimbursement. The Joint Commission sets voluntary standards to help facilities meet government regulations. Has either of these agencies taken any investigative action toward AHC? If not, why? Why is this facility still in operation?
ARE THEY WASHING THEIR HANDS YET?
HAVE THEY FIGURED OUT THE GOWNS YET?
ARE THEY PUSHING DIRTY DIAPERS WITH BARE HANDS INTO THE TRASH CANS YET?
DO THEY CARE?
https://youtu.be/yQn0z6xa8II
A needed tutorial…
This place is awful even without COVID, as described in other articles. It needs to be shut down. I would never want anyone I cared about to be in this dump!
Seriously. If my kids ever stuck me in a place like this, I'd be livid.
Things you learn in America:
I did not LIE, oh no, i just fail to tell the truth.
I wish the staff nothing but the best
I've read several comments from residents, family members, and staffs about management needs to be replaced,Teresa Grant(Director of nursing) is she still there? If she is that shows corporate doesn't really care about whats went on or going on in the facility.
I just pray we don't have a second round of Covid19 in the building, with Teresa Grant still the DON with her cover ups more residents will die if corporate doesn't replace her. My heart goes out to the residents and nursing staffs ��
Teresa got to go and be stripped of her nursing license she is a disgrace to Healthcare.
Teresa Grant has lied to Fairfax Department of Health once again and get away with it. She fails to tell them that T. Rose a friend (resident) of mine here at Annandale Health was positive in September.
I'm on it…