Failure to Provide Required Written Discharge Notice and Appeal Rights
Penalty
Summary
The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to provide required written notification of a discharge, including appeal rights and bed-hold information, to a resident and the resident’s representative. The resident had dementia with agitation and anxiety disorders and had a designated representative who signed the admission paperwork because the resident stated he could not sign. The resident was transferred to the hospital for medical evaluation, and a Notice of Transfer or Discharge was completed on the transfer date, indicating the resident refused to sign. However, there was no documentation that this notice was mailed or otherwise provided in writing to the resident’s representative, despite the representative being listed in the record. Subsequent nursing documentation showed that the Resident Care Manager (Staff B) contacted the resident by phone the day after the transfer and obtained verbal confirmation that the resident did not wish to return to the facility, and the resident was treated as discharged at that time. Staff B did not contact the resident’s representative to notify them of the discharge and confirmed there was no record that written notice or appeal rights were mailed to the representative. Joint record reviews with Medical Records (Staff D) and another Resident Care Manager (Staff C) confirmed that all documents were scanned into the EHR and that there was no documentation of written discharge notification to either the resident or the representative. The DON (Staff A) stated the expectation that written notifications of transfers and discharges be provided to residents and their representatives, but this did not occur for this resident, in violation of WAC 388-97-0120(2)(a-c).
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