Miami ALF shut down for breaking COVID-19 rules and endangering residents, state says
A small assisted living facility in Southwest Miami-Dade was ordered to shut down this week over several COVID-19 violations, including failing to properly care for residents with symptoms and allowing people who tested positive to enter.
The 24-hour, six-bed ALF at 5111 SW 112th Ave. was licensed to Kevin’s ALF Corp. The for-profit corporation is registered to Zairys Garit, who is also listed as its president, according to records from the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations.
Inspectors with Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees assisted living facilities, visited the ALF last Wednesday to conduct a survey. The emergency order was signed and filed in Tallahassee Monday by the agency secretary.
State inspectors said that three of the ALF’s residents had died within the past five weeks. At least one of them had tested positive for COVID-19 during an autopsy by the Medical Examiner’s Office.
One of the other residents who died had experienced possible COVID-19 symptoms previously, including coughing and a four-day fever. The facility had no record of seeking medical attention for the resident, according to the emergency order. The third resident who died was given CPR by staff, despite having a “Do not resuscitate order.”
Garit said she is “totally shocked” with the shutdown order and says the investigator lied in his report. Garit is a registered nurse in Miami-Dade.
“What they are doing to me is fraud,” she said in Spanish in a phone interview with the Miami Herald on Tuesday. “They are putting things that are fake.”
Garit said the resident who died didn’t have fever, and that she contacted family and fire-rescue when the person began to show signs of illness.
The emergency order also notes that while the investigator was given a temperature check and asked to answer a screening questionnaire when arriving at the facility, four others who arrived were not, despite the state’s current COVID-19 mandates.
The investigator saw the facility’s administrator get a temperature check upon arrival but the person did not answer the screening questionnaire. The facility’s “shareholder,” a resident’s adult child and a hospice nurse also walked in without any COVID-19 screening, the order stated.
Of those who walked into the facility, one had tested positive and later negative for COVID-19 and another had tested positive for the disease three times, most recently on Sept. 3, and still had not tested negative, according to the emergency order.
“Shockingly, persons known to have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus are allowed entry to the Facility,” the emergency order said. The facility “knew or should have known that caregivers had been exposed to the virus and had not been removed from service.”
The facility also “could not produce documentation indicating that these individuals were medically cleared to resume contact with vulnerable persons” and couldn’t demonstrate “any effort to provide infection control practices, including surface sanitation, the donning of full personal protective equipment, or resident isolation procedures,” the order states.
The order states that the facility only has one staff member who cares for the residents 24 hours a day and while the person did wear a mask, gloves were worn intermittently and were not worn when giving medications to residents, despite state COVID-19 requirements.
The person also never wore gowns or face shields despite having them available and was unable to explain how to provide CPR despite possessing a current certification in the life-saving medical intervention, reads the order.
Garit said her facility is caring for four people but only one has family. Now, she’s trying to figure out where to place the other three residents.
“AHCA is abusing their power and they treat administrators of ALF really bad ... we help viejitos, we care for them and they [AHCA] abuse us,” Garit said in Spanish.
The emergency shutdown order revoked Kevin’s ALF Corp license to operate the ALF and required her to close the assisted living facility by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 8:13 AM.
