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In April, it was announced that the state Department of Health was investigating the 125-bed Eden Park Health Care Center in Cobleskill, looking into patient care issues.
On March 3, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services levied a civil penalty of $43,622 against the Eden Park facility in Cobleskill.
Earlier this month, the Cobleskill nursing home owned by Eden Park Health Services Inc. agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment.
The lawsuit had been filed in U.S. District Court in Albany in September 2005 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Kathleen Verna, a former speech pathologist at the facility. Court records indicate that at least a dozen other women may have been involved.
The Cobleskill facility employs about 150 people.
The employees alleged that they were subjected to "offensive propositioning and degrading comments regarding oral sex, masturbation and their physical appearance", according to court files.
The EEOC said that when Verna complained to the administration, they responded by promoting her primary harasser to be Verna's supervisor. When Verna refused to work with him, she was fired.
Although agreeing to pay $250,000 to settle the claim, Eden Park denied that any harassment had occurred, issuing a statement that "Eden Park has been committed to a harassment-free workplace and has policies and procedures for employees to handle these matters".
Eden Park chief executive officer Scott Hoffman said that the company believed that "any court determination in the matter would have ultimately been decided in Eden Park's favor".
Hoffman said that "Our decision to settle this case is strictly a business one ... This settlement allows us to end this dispute and to avoid the tremendous expense and time commitment associated with protracted litigation."
The EEOC said that in addition to the monetary settlement, the court required the nursing home to revise its anti-harassment and anti-retaliation policies and sexual harassment training.
Court files show that the alleged harassment dated back to 2000.
During the investigation of the facility earlier this year, the state had found that the Cobleskill facility was in "immediate jeopardy" based on a Medicare and Medicaid survey of the home.
A rating of immediate jeopardy indicates that a facility has deficiencies that have caused or are likely to cause serious harm, injury, impairment or death if not immediately rectified.
Those deficiencies, which included quality-of-care problems and administration issues, have supposedly been corrected. In addition to the state-imposed penalties, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services imposed a civil penalty of $5,050 per day on Eden Park and denied payment for new admissions. Medicare and Medicaid patients in the home weren't forced to leave but the home didn't receive payment for new admissions while it remained in "immediate jeopardy".
The Eden Park facilities in Cobleskill and Utica are both on the National Nursing Home Watch List for causing immediate harm to a patient or subjecting patients to immediate jeopardy.
http://memberofthefamily.net/watch/335206.htm
Eden Park also owns nursing homes in Catskill, Glens Falls, East Greenbush, Poughkeepsie and Utica.
In 2003, there was a family fight involving the operation of the nursing homes, then being operated by Eden Park Management Inc, Two brothers went against their other brother and sister.
Mark and Sheldon Hoffman asked the courts to dissolve the family-owned nursing home company which employed 2,000 people overall among the various facilities.
The two brothers had charged their brother, Scott Hoffman, CEO, sister Paulette Hoffman and Alton Marshall, Eden Park's corporate secretary, with mismanagement.
Scott Hoffman opposed the attempted dissolution.
He currently heads the corporation which now owns the facilities, the Eden Park Health Care Services Inc. based at 22 Holland Ave. in Albany.
Enforcement actions against nursing homes during 2006 can be found at
http://www.ltccc.org/enforcements/documents/ltccc_enforce_sum06.pdf
http://www.ltccc.org/enforcements/documents/enforcementsAugust06.pdf
For additional information concerning long term care for the elderly and disabled, visit http://www.ltccc.org/ and in particular nursing homes, http://www.ltccc.org/key/nursing.shtml. 10-30-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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