Court proceedings are pending in Shawnee County as a receivership case involving Emporia’s Flint Hills Care Center continues.
As KVOE News reported Friday, Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services Secretary Tim Keck was granted temporary receivership status of the 41-bed Emporia facility as of Sept. 5, meaning the state has taken over the facility’s operations and management until further notice. Two other facilities, Providence Living Center of Topeka and Kenwood Plaza of St. John, were placed into temporary receivership in late August. Those cases were combined into the Shawnee County case.
Virgil Goracke of Omaha, Neb., is listed as the owner of all three facilities, with Pinnacle Management Company overseeing operations.
A filing by the state as provided to KVOE News alleges Flint Hills Care Center owes over $400,000 to the state of Kansas for quality care assessment payments, over $40,000 to a therapy vendor and over $17,000 to its food service vendor. The court filing says the facility has not submitted its annual licensing renewal application or paid the necessary fee, endangering the care center’s residents and putting the facility at risk of having its license revoked. It also says Pinnacle Management apparently commingled funds for all its facilities including Flint Hills Care Center with Goracke, Pinnacle Management and the care center all insolvent.
Goracke, Pinnacle Management and Providence Living Center have been ordered to “refrain from operating the adult care homes and real estate” associated with Flint Hills Care Center effective immediately.
Reports online through the Aging and Disability Services website, www.kdads.ks.gov, show Flint Hills Care Center had payments denied for new Medicare and Medicaid admissions for part of 2016 after what KDADS said were facility-acquired pressure ulcers among certain residents. Payments were again denied for part of last year after alleged threatening behavior from staff towards a resident. That unnamed staffer was later suspended.
Other concerns dating back to 2012 included alleged lack of evidence for lab reports, substandard maintenance and housekeeping services, lack of fall intervention procedures, issues with advance directives paperwork, problems with the facility’s call system, insufficient social service personnel, delayed food service and growth of undetermined substances in different portions of the facility. Former staffers have told KVOE News there was mold in the building two years ago.
KVOE News has called the legal firm representing Goracke and Pinnacle Management in this civil case as well as Flint Hills Care Center management. Return calls are currently pending.
Click here for the KDADS online report page.
Related: Flint Hills Care Center now in temporary receivership
