Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Thursday she has taken steps to make sure nursing homes aren’t tipped off to surprise raids aimed at increasing residents’ safety.
CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Thursday she has taken steps to make sure nursing homes aren’t tipped off to surprise raids aimed at increasing residents’ safety. Madigan told The Associated Press that her office is clamping down on leaks that could give nursing homes time to bring in more staff and spruce up living conditions before investigators arrive. "We’re not going to let these leaks happen, and if they do happen we’re going to show up at your nursing home again," Madigan said. The attorney general’s office is investigating whether someone tipped off a Chicago nursing home to an impending and supposedly unannounced visit, Madigan said. The Chicago Tribune first reported the investigation Thursday. She said the investigation was prompted by a July visit to Grasmere Place, where a facility administrator met officials in the nursing home’s lobby, looked at her watch and said: "What took you so long? I heard you were going to be here a lot earlier." A return visit weeks later found fewer staff and worse conditions, Madigan said. "They went back at night and it was a very different situation," Madigan said. "It wasn’t clean, residents were milling about, there were toilets overflowing." The facility’s administrator did not return a phone message seeking comment Thursday. The for-profit facility houses people with serious mental illnesses and is licensed for about 200 beds. More than any other state, Illinois has relied on nursing homes to house the mentally ill after shutting down state mental hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s. The attorney general’s office began unannounced checks of nursing homes in December following reports of violent assaults by residents on other residents. The attorney general’s sweeps, an ongoing effort called Operation Guardian, have led to 20 arrests of nursing home residents with outstanding warrants, Madigan said. The operation has included visits to 17 nursing homes, including facilities in Chicago, Rockford, Carbondale, Peoria and East St. Louis. "Fugitives have used nursing homes as safe houses," Madigan said. "We can’t have criminals abusing and assaulting vulnerable residents." The Illinois Department of Public Health conducts its own separate unannounced inspections of nursing homes to make sure the facilities are complying with state law. In recent years, the department has referred incidents of suspected tip-offs for investigation by prosecutors, "but it has not been a pervasive issue, so not many," said department spokeswoman Melaney Arnold. "It is a felony for someone to profit from the willful pre-notification" of an inspection, Arnold said. All surveyors are trained on the need to maintain confidentiality, she said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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