Problem with nursing-home evacuation was execution, not plan itself: Louisiana health officials

Problem with nursing-home evacuation was execution, not plan itself: Louisiana health officials

The ghastly problems that festered after residents of seven New Orleans-area nursing homes were evacuated to a warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish had less to do with the emergency plan itself than with the way the manager of those facilities executed it, Louisiana Department of Health officials said Sunday.

As The Times-Picayune | The Advocate reported Saturday, Bob Dean, the Baton Rouge businessman who owns the seven nursing homes in question, had filed plans with the LDH that spelled out how he would move as many as 700 residents to the warehouse he owns in Independence in the case of an evacuation.

When Hurricane Ida approached, all seven homes were evacuated, and 843 residents were brought to the facility on Friday — about 20% more people than Dean's plans had envisioned.

Even so, when LDH officials inspected the warehouse on the Friday before landfall and then again a day later, they found that "from a facility standpoint, the minimum necessary components to provide a safe sheltering environment for a very short period of time were met," spokesperson Aly Neel said in a prepared statement.

When news broke that nearly 850 frail nursing-home patients were crammed into a warehouse in a remote corner of Louisiana during Hurricane Ida…

But after landfall, backup generators failed, trash piled up and care declined to shockingly poor standards, with residents complaining of having to lie in their own feces and urine, the LDH said. "Residents' basic care needs were not met," Neel said, adding that "it was clear to receiving hospitals that residents had been neglected."

Making matters worse, Neel said, Dean "failed to communicate the dire situation to the state and ask for help," instead trying to prevent LDH's inspectors from assessing the situation.

By Thursday, four residents had died. LDH officials shut the warehouse down that day and moved the 800-plus occupants to other shelters and care facilities. As of Saturday, LDH had linked seven deaths to the evacuation and its aftermath. 

LDH also announced Saturday that the seven Dean-owned nursing homes whose residents were taken there would be closed for the time being while health officials conduct an investigation. Attorney General Jeff Landry has also announced an investigation into the matter.

The nursing homes owner who left nearly 850 of his patients in an unsanitary warehouse following Hurricane Ida has been a generous supporter o…

The state requires each of Louisiana’s roughly 280 nursing homes to submit disaster plans that explain how they would provide care without power, where they would evacuate if necessary and how they would get patients to that facility. LDH signs off on the plans, but it's unclear how closely they review them.

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Dean said in an interview with WVUE-TV last week that the plan to house residents in the warehouse went fairly well. "We only had five deaths within the six days and normally with 850 people, you’ll have a couple a day, so we did really good with taking care of people," he said.

In sometimes hard-to-decipher texts exchanged with The Times-Picayune | The Advocate on Sunday, Dean seemed to be making similar arguments. He complained that state officials had "absconded (with) the residents" and said that he and his employees had only been able to locate a few of them. As a result of the state's actions, he said, families were "heartbroken and distraught."

Over the years, Dean has often opted to evacuate facilities when a storm with Category 3 winds is approaching, even though evacuations can be very stressful on the elderly and the infirm. He has also regularly used warehouses or other large buildings he owns to serve as temporary care centers for his nursing home residents — sometimes attracting controversy in the process.

For 2008's Hurricane Gustav, he sent hundreds of residents from four of his homes to an abandoned Winn-Dixie building in Plaquemine that he owns. A nurse from Dean's South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab home who worked on that evacuation as well as Ida said the Gustav evacuation went poorly, in part because the Winn-Dixie was poorly stocked with necessary supplies.

But the evacuation to Independence was "100 times worse," she said, thanks to a critical shortage of supplies. The nurse spoke on condition of anonymity over fear for her job.

That nurse and another also said the warehouse was badly understaffed. Neel's statement did not address specific questions about whether staffing or supply levels were adequate.

The Louisiana Department of Health announced Saturday evening that they are shutting down seven nursing homes owned by Baton Rouge businessman…

Dean also evacuated residents of his New Orleans-area nursing homes to a poorly-equipped warehouse he owned in downtown Baton Rouge for 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and 1998’s Hurricane Georges.

Two residents died during or shortly after the Georges evacuation, via a bus that lacked air conditioning. Meanwhile, Baton Rouge fire officials shut the warehouse down because it violated fire codes, lacking sprinklers and fire alarms. They had become aware of issues because of multiple 911 calls involving patients suffering from the heat.

Dean eventually paid a $1,000 fine in connection as punishment for those failures.