CANHR in the News234 posts

By Emily DeRuy, Bay Area News Group, January 7 2022 ATHERTON, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 6: Erika Shimahara, of Atherton, Calif., holds a picture of her mother who lives in a Redwood City assisted living facility, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022. With the state about to tighten visitor restrictions due to the spread the omicron variant, some families are worried about losing access to their loved ones.

By Samantha Young, CaliforniaHealthline, December 15 2021 Ambulances line up as patients who tested positive for covid-19 leave Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, California, on April 8, 2020. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) SACRAMENTO, Calif. — About 1 in 8 Californians who have died of covid lived in a nursing home.

By Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters, October 6 2021 At an emotional legislative hearing Tuesday, lawmakers and critics subjected the Newsom administration to blistering questions about the state’s oversight of nursing homes. Assemblymember Jim Wood, a Santa Rosa Democrat who chairs the Assembly Health Committee, questioned the state’s lack of urgency in addressing licensing concerns. “Where is the proactive, patient centered, public safety approach here?” he asked Cassie Dunham, an acting deputy director of the California Department of Public Health.

By Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters, October 4 2021 Johanna Trenerry of Happy Valley holds a photograph of herself with her husband, Art Trenerry, who died last year of COVID-19 while staying at Windsor Redding Care Center. His family members, including Johanna, are named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the facility. Photo by Matt Bates for CalMatters IN SUMMARY A lawsuit describes nursing home magnate Shlomo Rechnitz and his companies as the “unlicensed owner-operator” of a troubled Redding facility.

By Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters, August 19 2021 Illustration by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters; iStock California Department of Public Health officials say they cannot fix their mistake, amid cries the licensing system for nursing homes is “broken and ineffective.” The state’s nursing home licensing system has long raised the ire of elder-care advocates.  Now, another misstep has sparked new frustration among both nursing home watchdogs and state lawmakers.  By its own admission, the California Department of Public Health incorrectly listed a controversial nursing home operator as holding permanent licenses for two Los Angeles-area nursing homes.

Aaron Mendelson, LAist, July 19 2021 Solorzano photographed in 2018 with Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose campaign ReNew supported with $20,000. Newsom donated $10,000 of that to charity after our investigation was published in April.(Screenshot from ReNew’s Instagram account/California Secretary of State) The letters from the state’s public health department to nursing home mogul Crystal Solorzano were blunt: “You have not provided evidence satisfactory to be licensed.” Solorzano, whose Southern California-based ReNew Health is connected to nursing homes throughout the state, had applied to acquire nine additional facilities in April 2020.

By Aaron Mendelson and Elly Yu, NPR, May 26 2021 In December 2019, Cynthia Carrillo placed her older brother David at Villa Mesa Care Center, a nursing home in Upland, Calif. After the shutdown in March of 2020, Cynthia Carrillo couldn’t visit David inside Villa Mesa. One month later, David, 65, who had Down syndrome, died from COVID-19.

By Amita Sharma, KPBS, May 18 2021 Above: In this Dec. 5, 2019, file photo, a woman walks to her room at a senior care home in Calistoga, Calif. PHOTO BY ERIC RISBERG / ASSOCIATED PRESS Annual inspections of California’s 1,100 nursing homes have resumed after a pandemic-induced, year-long hiatus. And anecdotal evidence suggests the inspectors have much work to do as they re-enter facilities.