Sunday, October 14, 2018

Blue Mountain Fails to Make Corrections


By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A Carbon County Pennsylvania hospital failed to implement a promised plan of correction and has been cited yet again for the same deficiencies along with failure to do what was already promised.
State Health Department surveyors found in August the same deficiencies at two sites of the Blue Mountain Hospital that they had months earlier.
The problems were found at the St. Lukes's Gnaden Huetten campus in Lehighton and a second St. Luke's site in Palmerton, according to an inspection report recently made public.
"The Blue Mountain Hospital failed to correct the previously identified deficient practices," the report states.
State surveyors visited the facilities between July 31 and Aug. 3.
Among those deficiencies were the lack of treatment plans for individual patients and failing to maintain safety and sanitation requirements.
Part of the St Luke's University Health Network, the hospital had promised to fully implement a plan of correction by May 10. Network officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Other deficiencies include the failure to use the proper voluntary commitment forms and failure to eliminate or remedy items that could be used for suicides.
The facility also failed to involve the required staffers, such as social workers, psychiatrists and nurses, in the development of individual treatment plans.
In a new plan of correction the hospital promised to move some elderly patients to "a newly renovated safer location. The Palmerton campus includes a 16-bed older adult behavioral unit.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com

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