Connecticut Retirement Home Investigated After Fatal Wheelchair Accident
Published: September 1st, 2010 • No Comments
A Connecticut nursing home is under investigation for potential nursing home neglect in the death of a dementia resident who allegedly wandered away from the facility in his wheelchair and rolled down a hill to his death late last month.
Investigators say Percy Sumner, 88, fell out of his wheelchair after careening down a 44-foot grassy embankment on August 21. He smashed through a vinyl picket fence, over a rock wall, and then hit his head on the cement. He died late that day at a nearby hospital.
Sumner was a resident of the Bishops Corner Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Hartford, which is now under investigation by the state Department of Public Health as a result of his death. Nursing home staff members have told investigators that Sumner was seen headed for the door that morning but had been sent back to his room. He was placed on a 15-minute check cycle to ensure he did not elope from the facility, nursing home officials say, but he fled between checks.
Sumner’s nursing home elopement set off a door alarm and his personal alarm, but he was not sighted by staff until after the accident, according to a story in the Hartford Courant.
Federal regulations have a requirement that all elder care facilities conduct a nursing home wandering and elopement assessment of every new resident. That assessment needs to be updated on a regular basis, or when their medical condition changes. That assessment needs to include a written plan of care which details the functionality of the resident and the risk of them attempting to leave the facility. This assessment forms the basis, in part, of the amount of supervision they should receive and how much attention should be paid to preventing them from leaving the facility.
