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FRANKLIN GROVE – A state agency is refusing to renew the nursing home administrator license of the former head of Franklin Grove Living and Rehabilitation Center following an investigation into substandard care provided in 2016.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation placed a “refuse to renew” designation for the administrator license of former administrator Jessica Rogers in September for actions or omissions that violated the Illinois Nursing Home Administrator Licensing and Disciplinary Act.
Under the act, “engaging in dishonorable, unethical or unprofessional conduct of a character likely to deceive, defraud or harm the public” is grounds for renewal refusal.
According to case documents from the IDFPR that Sauk Valley Media recently obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request:
“The department received information from the Illinois Department of Public Health on or about July 28, 2016, that respondent provided substandard quality of care while employed as the nursing home administrator at the Franklin Grove Living and Rehab in Franklin Grove, Illinois.”
It further states that the substandard quality of care included “failing to develop and implement policies and procedures that prohibit mistreatment, neglect, and abuse of residents and misappropriation of resident property; and failing to ensure that the resident environment remains free of accident hazards and each resident receives adequate supervision and assistance devices to prevent accidents.”
The department issued a notice of intent to refuse to renew the license on Aug. 2 and Rogers failed to file a response within 30 days.
Specifics of the department’s investigation are not subject to public records law.
Rogers received a temporary nursing home administrator license in December 2015, which was renewed a year later and expired on Dec. 9, 2017.
In 2016, the Illinois Department of Public Health fined the nursing home at 502 N. State St. “for failure to ensure proper working mechanical equipment was being used to appropriately lift residents, and failure to record the problem so it would not happen again,” a violation that investigators said contributed to a resident’s death.
According to the IDPH report about that violation:
On June 10, a mechanical lift was being used to transfer a patient from a wheelchair to a bed, and the support loop to the sling holding her left leg broke.
She fell to the floor, breaking her left leg near her hip and her right leg near her knee. According to a physician where she was hospitalized, the broken bones caused her condition to deteriorate and contributed to her death 4 days later.