State must get stern with lax New Port Inn

The Human Resources Department at the New Port Inn needs to expand its list of applicants' desired qualifications beyond not being in jail. Assisted living facilities are supposed to help elderly or disabled people who are unable to live by themselves, but who do not require round-the-clock care. To do that job adequately, assisted living facilities need a sufficient number of trained, competent employees who have undergone criminal background checks.

Statements from past employees and state records indicate the 126-bed for-profit facility on Congress Street is failing that mission and putting patient safety as a secondary consideration.

As reported by Times staff writer Thomas Lake, the New Port Inn has hired people with criminal histories without doing proper background screening; assigned medical duties to untrained staff; failed to have sufficient staff members on duty; and ditched questionable hires to escape state scrutiny, but promised at least one of them reinstatement after the heat passes.

Here's the result of the sloppy hiring practices:

-The state fined the facility for insufficient staffing after an April 2006 incident in which employees left the fifth floor unattended and a resident was injured tumbling down a fire escape after opening a fire door.

-Residents were at risk of imminent danger when a state inspection discovered unqualified medical technicians performing blood tests and preparing insulin syringes - duties that by law must be done by a licensed nurse.

-Most notably, deputies arrested nursing assistant William Charewicz in September after he was accused of punching, shoving and putting a forearm to the throat of a 78-year-old Alzheimer's patient. Charewicz was hired over the summer without a waiver for his criminal behavior. He joined the staff a few months after he was sentenced to four years' probation for felony theft. His record also includes a no-contest plea to battery on a law enforcement officer in 1992.

The state Agency for Health Care Administration should pay heed to the repetition of the New Port Inn's shortcomings. Three years ago, a state inspector reviewed six personnel files and found two hadn't undergone the state-required criminal background check. The facility's willingness to duplicate that carelessness in 2007 helped leave an Alzheimer's patient battered.

One former medical technician told the Times he resigned in June rather than do the medical duties that should have been assigned to a nurse. When he quit, he said, his supervisor told him he could be replaced by "anybody off the street."

The state needs to ensure the New Port Inn puts an end to that practice. A vulnerable population deserves better.

[Last modified October 4, 2007, 21:06:28]