Nursing Care Reform Group Criticizes Handling of Complaints : Health: Activists say the rate of citations issued through the state agency’s local office is below average.

The state office that investigates complaints about nursing care in Ventura and three neighboring counties handled the second-highest number of complaints in the state last year but issued the fourth-lowest number of citations, according to a report released Monday by a nursing care reform group.

To David Seubert, the reform group’s consumer information coordinator, the many complaints and few citations suggest poor enforcement of state policies governing nursing care.

“Ventura’s had some lax enforcement down there,” he said.

Using numbers from the state’s Department of Health Services, the report by California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform examined statewide the number of complaints, citations and so-called deficiencies, which are notices that a provider has failed to comply with state and federal requirements.

According to the report, the Ventura district office of the state agency responsible for handling nursing care complaints received 729 last year, more than any other district except San Jose. The district includes Ventura, Kern, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

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Statewide, the report found that 17.7 citations were issued for every 100 complaints. In the Ventura district, 6.45 citations were issued for every 100 complaints.

The Ventura district office issued 47 citations last year. Of the 17 districts statewide, only Fresno, Daly City and a Los Angeles district issued fewer. Another Los Angeles district had the same number as Ventura.

Complaints may come from relatives, patients or anyone with an interest in the medical care involved.

Lana Pimbley, local district manager of the health department’s certification division, declined comment Monday because she had not studied the report.

In Ventura County last year, the state recorded 223 complaints about the county’s 24 nursing care providers. The district office handed out 12 citations for such incidents as:

* A patient with sleep apnea, a condition that causes breathing to stop during sleep, died at Camarillo State Hospital last fall. According to the study, the patient had not been provided with the proper breathing treatment.

Hospital spokesman Myron Dimmett said the patient had refused to use a monitor that would sound an alarm if his breathing stopped.

* Three female patients at the Simi Valley Hospital and Health Care Services were sexually abused by a male nurse’s aide, who was convicted of molesting the women and given a 10-year sentence. According to hospital spokeswoman JoLynn de la Torre, the aide worked for a nursing service and not the hospital.

* Ojai Valley Community Hospital was cited this year after complaints that a nurse’s aide had verbally and physically abused two patients, stuffing a blanket in the mouth of one. Ed Porter, an associate administrator for the hospital, said the employee has been let go.

The annual report described in highly critical terms the state of nursing care in California. Staffing levels at many of the state’s 1,448 nursing homes are inadequate, the report said, and the use of chemical and physical restraints on patients has increased.

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The report also said that government regulations have done little to prevent patient neglect.

“Unfortunately, the lack of an enforcement mentality at the department’s leadership levels . . . has led to non-responsiveness to consumer complaints, dramatic inconsistencies in enforcement at the district office levels and an enforcement system that no longer protects consumers from abuse and neglect,” the report said.

However, the report also said that the health department cited 32,216 deficiencies statewide last year, an average of 23 per facility and two to three times the national average, according to the report.

Brenda Klutz, an assistant deputy director for the department’s licensing and certification program in Sacramento, said the high number of deficiencies when compared with other states is a sign the agency is doing its job.

“We’re actually considered to be an aggressive enforcement agency,” she said. “I think we have an extremely high caliber of evaluator.”