Cases of neglect drive change of long term care conditions at Calgary nursing home

by Ryan Rumbolt | Calgary Journal

When Wyonne Somers started to develop memory issues, her family decided it was time for her to move into assisted living.

Finding a home was no easy task for Somers’ family and granddaughter Breanne Sinclair. After a temporary residence at a Bowness facility and being evicted from a nursing home in Lynnwood, Wyonne Somers finally found full-time care in April 2013 at the only home that was available — McKenzie Towne Continuing Care Centre (MTCC).

“At the time we kind of looked at it like a blessing in disguise,” says Sinclair of finding MTCC. “But it all kind of went down hill from there, that’s where we started to see the neglect.”

Wyonne Somers died in October 2013 from an infection in her bloodstream that she developed at the McKenzie Towne facility.

Somers was admitted to hospital over the Thanksgiving weekend because wounds on her legs and feet had become infected from improper sanitary conditions.

“They weren’t changing her diapers often enough, so they were leaking down her legs into the wounds,” says Sinclair. “That’s where it got out of control.”

Sinclair says that when visiting her Nana at MTCC she often had difficulty finding staff members.

“It was really hard to find staff in the area she was in,” says Sinclair. “When she was first placed it was on the first floor which is an unlocked ward, and she had escaped two different times.”

Besides inadequate staffing, Sinclair says that she noticed problems with safety as well.

During one visit she witnessed an elderly resident open an unlocked — and unsupervised — medical supply closet.

"The closet where they keep all the medicine, they had the door open,” says Sinclair.

“There was one (staff member) who was overseeing all these different people — maybe six to eight patients — and one patient had actually wandered into the closet.”

History of Neglect

This is not the first case of patient neglect to come out of the MTCC, which is owned and operated by a company called Revera.

Violet MacDonald, 73, was a resident at the MTCC and she also died after untreated bedsores spread to her bones.

Three separate reviews of the MTCC have been conducted since 2003, all of which have found serious issues with the facility ranging from staff and safety concerns to improper storage of medical supplies.

Sinclair says her Nana suffered a few falls while at MTCC, all of which were unwitnessed and not all of them were reported to the family.

“My mom asked to have rails put on the bed when she sleeps, and they refused to do that because they said there is a hazard of patients getting their head stuck in the rails,” says Sinclair.

Sinclair says that one Somers’ falls resulted in a concussion, which went undiagnosed and untreated for nearly a week.

“She was never seen by a doctor,” says Sinclair. “The nurses called a doctor who had decided over the phone that she would be okay and it wouldn’t be necessary for her to go to the hospital.”

Sinclair described when her mother went to visit Nana at the home and found bruises on her face. Her mother then demanded that Nana go to the hospital, but staff at MTCC refused to call an ambulance.

Somers was eventually brought to the hospital where doctors discovered she did have a concussion.

Alberta Health Services released a review of MTCC facilities that identified issues with staffing, proper training for staff and storage of medical supplies.

As a result of the review a trained AHS staff member will be on site at the MTCC at least until January 2015.

Too Little Too Late

Jeff Lozon is the now-retired CEO of Revera. He resigned shortly after the stories of neglect at MTCC began to appear in the news, but not before reaching out to Sinclair and her family.

“He called each one of us in the family,” says Sinclair. “He expressed his condolences. In my opinion it was damage control."

"He said his mother is elderly as well and that this was unacceptable,” says Sinclair. I asked him 'Would he accept this as proper care for his mother?' He couldn’t answer that question for me. He just said 'I’m sorry for your loss'.”

Health Minister Fred Horne issued a statement calling the deaths at the MTCC an “isolated incident” and said that following a review of the MTCC, Revera may be asked to stop operations in Canada — a statement that Sinclair finds unacceptable and calls “lip service”.

Horne was unavailable for comment.

Revera, which operates 38 sites in Canada, has given no explanations as to why Somers' condition got so bad and offered nothing in the way of compensation.

But financial compensation is not what Sinclair and her family hopes to gain by telling Nana’s story.

Sinclair hopes that people will be better educated about their options and know what to look for when choosing a home for loved ones.

“Tour the facility, tour it multiple times. If you’re seeing that there isn’t staff around I would say that is a huge red flag,” says Sinclair. “It’s not all about the esthetic of the home.”

“On the outside [MTCC] looks nice, but you get inside and see there are demons in there.”

The AHS review of the McKenzie Towne Continuing Care Centre can be found by clicking the link below: http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/Publications/ahs-pub-review-mtcc.pdf