A fake license, application lies, a patient missing for a day: a Miami ALF’s bad 2019
Tuesday’s disappearance of 67-year-old Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s sufferer Carlos Closas from Las Mercedes Boarding Home in Miami capped off a troubled year for the assisted living facility.
Closas was found and reunited with his family Wednesday. He’d been missing from Las Mercedes since 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Bad inspections (officially called “surveys”) along with the state finding owner Rolando Rodriguez lied on an ALF license renewal application resulted in an April rejection of that application by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). A Dec. 4 settlement agreement required Las Mercedes to pay a $15,000 fine and Rodriguez to give up ownership for license renewal.
The AHCA website lists the license for Las Mercedes Boarding Home as “In Litigation.” It’s a single-floor, 17-bedroom, 39-bed facility at 3418 SW 23rd Terr.
Under the agreement, Rodriguez no longer can be involved in the day-to-day management or have a controlling interest of any entity regulated by AHCA.
None of that takes into account the June 5, 2019, inspection that found three more serious violations (officially called “Class III deficiencies”), including a fake catering license, food safety violations and a resident not listed in the admission records.
That’s fewer than the Class III deficiencies found on each January 2019 and March 2019 (seven each). Violations under “Resident care — Supervision” “Resident care — Rights and Facility Procedures” and “Licensure Requirements” made appearances on each inspection.
Between those inspections, Las Mercedes Boarding Inc. submitted a renewal application. Rodriguez was listed as the owner, administrator and financial officer.
“Rolando Rodriguez...knowingly made false statements and omitted or otherwise misrepresented material facts in the renewal application with the intent to mislead (AHCA),” wrote Keisha Woods, AHCA’s Assisted Living Unit manager.
The four-day January inspection, Woods wrote, revealed that Rodriguez remained the owner on paper, but wasn’t any kind of administrator or financial officer. Tatiana Perez and Carlos Perez, through their Las Mercedes ALF Corp., “have been operating, maintaining and managing the facility since approximately 2012.”
Sunbiz.org says Las Mercedes ALF Corp. was dissolved Sept. 27. Rodriguez will be giving up ownership to Yitzhak Rivero’s Las Mercedes Boarding Home Inc.
Las Mercedes’ most recent inspection, in June, featured an array of violations, starting with admitting two residents that Las Mercedes isn’t licensed to accept.
The inspection quotes Florida Administrative Code 429.26: “No resident who requires 24-hour nursing supervision, except for a resident who is an enrolled hospice patient...shall be retained in a facility licensed under this part.”
Yet, the inspector saw one resident who “could not stand up by herself and, in less than 20 seconds, sat down in the wheelchair. Resident 2 could not stand by himself or make any steps.”
Though Resident 2 couldn’t move by himself, he was officially invisible, noted on neither the admission or the discharge log.
As for the food service, the inspector saw “all lunch foods put in pans on the kitchen stove for re-heating. It was not confirmed at what temperature the food arrived to the facility.”
Keeping food at a proper temperature prevents bacterial growth, which is why grocery or restaurant inspectors will slap Stop Sale orders on food kept too warm, too cool or out of temperature control for too long.
Also, “the Administrator stated, “the food is delivered to the owner of the facility around 12:30 p.m., then she brings it to the kitchen as soon as they get it.””
Then, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation “confirmed that the copy of the catering license provided by the facility was falsified; the license number did not exist and the address corresponded to a closed business.”
This story was originally published January 1, 2020 at 6:27 PM.
