On Sunday, an employee at Glen Oaks Alzheimer’s Special Care Center said she was not able to comment. The center’s executive director, Lisa Eastman, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Ms. Eastman sent a statement to the local television station KCCI, which reported on the case.
“We care deeply for our residents and remain fully committed to supporting their end-of-life care,” Ms. Eastman said in the statement. “All employees undergo regular training so they can best support end-of-life care and the death of our residents.”
The center did not dispute the Health Department’s findings, according to the report. It has 30 days from Feb. 1, the date of the citation, to request a formal hearing or pay the penalty.
The center is a 66-bed residential facility run by Dallas-based Frontier Management, one of the largest senior housing managers in the United States.
The center or its administrator has been fined more than a dozen times since opening in 2001, according to Iowa Health Department records, for violations that include a lack of specialized staff training in memory care and a lack of infection control during the pandemic, when patients who tested positive for Covid-19 were roomed with other residents.
It is not unheard-of for people to be declared dead only to be found alive hours later.
On Saturday, an 82-year-old woman was pronounced dead at a nursing home in Port Jefferson, N.Y., but was found to be breathing about three hours later at the funeral home where she was taken, according to the Suffolk County Police Department, which is investigating. The unidentified woman was taken to a hospital, the police said.
The case has been referred to the New York attorney general’s office, the police said. Calls to the nursing home, the Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center, and O.B. Davis Funeral Homes in Miller Place, N.Y., were not immediately returned on Sunday.
