Louisiana Voice

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is taking the correct action in launching an investigation into who was responsible for the decision to move 843 patients from seven nursing homes into a warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish during Hurricane Ida.

Landry told the Baton Rouge Advocate that his office’s goal was “to determine who decided to move these patients to this apparently unsafe and potentially inappropriate facility.”

That’s all well and good, but he could have a problem that we’ll examine later.

The warehousing of the patients in conditions of squalor from piled-up trash, overflowing toilets and non-working air conditioning has been linked to at least seven deaths. Dozens more were subsequently hospitalized.

While sprinkling his statement with such legally-cautious terms as “apparently,” “potentially” and “inappropriate,” Landry nevertheless indicated a willingness to conduct a real investigation. “We wish to determine who authorized that these patients be moved to that facility, who oversaw the movement, who later turned away career staff members of the Louisiana Department of Health when they attempted to look into this situation,” the AG said.

The patients came from River Palms Nursing and Rehab and Maison Orleans Healthcare Center in Orleans Parish, South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab in Lafourche Parish, Park Place Healthcare Nursing Home, West Jefferson Health Care Center and Maison DeVille Nursing Home in Jefferson Parish, and Maison DeVille Nursing Home in Terrebonne Parish.

All seven facilities are owned by Baton Rouge businessman Bob Dean, as is the warehouse, Waterbury Companies, where the patients were taken.

Dean is listed as an officer, director or manager of more than 100 corporate entities, according to Louisiana Secretary of State corporate records. At least 20 of those are related to the medical field, including at least a dozen nursing homes a hospice facility, a dialysis facility, and rehab and therapy facilities and an assisted living facility.

Since the warehousing debacle, the state has shut down the seven nursing homes involved but has done nothing about the other facilities owned by Dean.

The warehousing incident isn’t Dean’s first rodeo.

In 2009, OSHA FINED Louisiana Health Care Consultants, LLC, Dean Building Holdings and Bob Dean Enterprises, Inc. $112,000 for three willful and 10 serious federal health and safety regulation violations for failure to follow federal standards for asbestos-related projects in the construction industry.

The Baton Rouge Advocate’s Gordon Russell reported on Thursday that state regulators have repeatedly hit his nursing homes for inferior and occasional “shocking conditions,” including one resident drowning and another who was found covered in fire ants.

Even the warehousing incident in the wake of Hurricane Ida wasn’t an isolated case. In 1998, as Hurricane Georges approached, residents of three of his New Orleans-area nursing homes were similarly evacuated to a Baton Rouge warehouse – transported in a bus that lacked air conditioning. Two of the evacuees died either during or immediately following the trek.

In that case, Dean was found to have failed to file required documents with the state Department of Health or with Jefferson Parish officials spelling out his evacuation plan. The warehouse where they were taken, the Lyceum Dean in downtown Baton Rouge was in violation of the fire code, city officials said. The building lacked various safety systems, including a sprinkler system, fire alarms or emergency lights.

Dean received a hand-slap after Baton Rouge EMTs were called out to the building on seven different occasions in response to heat-related health issues for residents. He was fined $1500 for the botched Georges evacuation who said the lack of a disaster plan contributed to the death of an 86-year-old who died of a heart attack during the evacuation.

He appealed even that token fine and a state administrative judge reduced it to $1,000, explaining somewhat incredulously that Dean Enterprises was not responsible for the patient’s death but saying that a plan should have been filed.

In the most recent evacuation, Louisiana Department of Hospitals inspectors were barred from the warehouse when they attempted to conduct an inspection on Aug. 31.

For his part, Dean thinks he did a good job. “We only had five deaths within the six days,” he sniffed. “Normally, with 850 people, you’ll have a couple a day. So, we really did good on taking care of people.”

One LouisianaVoice reader said it seems to him that state oversight of nursing homes is a tad “shady.”

There’s a reason for that. The nursing home industry has long been an untouchable industry as far as the Louisiana Legislature is concerned, and the AG’s office could be part and parcel to that atmosphere.

All one has to do is check the campaign contributions of nursing home owners to see why the legislature (a) beats back efforts each year to fund in-home care of elderly patients (nursing homes are funded by Medicaid/Medicare on the basis of occupied beds – ergo, they must keep the beds occupied to keep the funds flowing and (b) the more money nursing homes make, the more in campaign contributions flow to the legislators who keep the nursing home operators happy, who in turn, keep the legislators happy, who in turn…well, you get the drift.

Dean, for example, has a history of supporting political campaigns with generous contributions:

• John Kennedy and his PAC: $30,000;
• Gov. Mike Foster: $2500;
• Former Attorney General Richard Ieyoub: $20,000;
• Gov. John Bel Edwards: $42,500;
• Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Daniel Edwards (Gov. Edwards’ brother): $6500

Gov. Edwards received more than $165,000 from all nursing home sources, including those from Dean, over the past decade. Others who received significant contributions from nursing homes included:

• Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco: $33,000;
• Former Gov. Bobby Jindal: $80,600;
• Former Attorney General Charles Foti: $7500;
• Former Attorney General Buddy Caldwell: $28,500;
• Former U.S. Sen. David Vitter: $4,750;
• U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy: $8,750;
• Louisiana Republican Party: $7,250;
• Louisiana Democratic Party: $52,000;

While I would love nothing better than to list all the legislators who have fed at the nursing home teat, the list I downloaded is simply too voluminous to make such a list practical. But rest assured, it shows that the nursing home industry is a major player in what goes on in that 24-story edifice that stands on the banks of Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge.

And though he received no contributions from Dean or any of his entities, Landry’s investigation could be tainted by the fact that he has been the recipient of more than $12,000 from seven nursing homes in Louisiana and a Mississippi company that operates at least 18 nursing homes in Louisiana – which only serves to reinforce my long-held conviction that no political candidate should be allowed to accept contributions from an industry he might regulate or have occasion to investigate.

Let’s hope that Landry doesn’t stumble over the bags of money from the nursing homes during his investigation.