One of the five nursing homes taken over by the state in September and October has been shut down, an attorney for the company hired by the state to manage the homes said Thursday.
Eric Bell, general counsel for Reliance Health Care in Conway, said the closure of the Deerview nursing home in Ola was the result of a determination by "the stakeholders" and was approved by owner Keith Head.
"The reality was that the facility was not going to be financially viable as a going concern," Bell said in an email.
He said the state Office of Long Term Care was notified on Dec. 10 that the facility would be closing.
"Resources such as Social Workers were brought in to work with patients and their families to find high quality and appropriate care settings," he said.
All the residents had been moved out by Dec. 18, he said. Most, he said, went to other facilities in or near Russellville, which is about 20 miles from Ola.
"The expectation for the other facilities is that they will remain financially viable operations once stabilized and the receivership actions are concluded," Bell said.
The state Department of Human Services took over Deerview and Arlington Cove Healthcare in Trumann on Sept. 30, citing financial trouble at the sites that put residents at risk.
It took control of homes in Jonesboro, Star City and Prescott for the same reason on Oct. 3.
All five homes are owned by Head and Cathy Parsons, who both live in Conway.
Reliance was tapped to manage the homes while they are in receivership. The company and its affiliates hold the licenses of about three dozen nursing homes in the state.
Human Services Department spokesman Marci Manley said a request to transfer the license for Deerview to a new owner is "pending." She said she didn't have further details on the potential ownership transfer on Thursday.
Sean Mathis, an attorney for Head, said the home was built in the 1960s, had only 10 bathrooms and "was having to rely on being grandfathered in on a number of health and safety issues."
"That building, if it was built as is today, would not be allowed to open as a nursing home," he said.
He also noted that, according to the state Health Services Permit Agency, Yell County as of October had 121 more nursing home beds than it was projected to need in the next five years based on the size of its aging population.
He said Head was part of an agreement that "allowed others" to make the determination about whether to close the home. The closure "wouldn't have been something he would have necessarily objected to," he said.
Head's company had held the license to operate the home for about 10 years, Mathis said.
Parsons didn't return a call seeking comment on Thursday.
Her attorney has said that she hasn't been involved with the nursing homes owned primarily by Head since March 2018.
A lawsuit Parsons filed against Head in Lincoln County Circuit Court accuses him of failing to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars that she lent to the nursing homes and the management company they owned together.
At the time it was taken over, Deerview was licensed to house 74 residents but had just 32.
In an affidavit supporting the state's petition in Yell County Circuit Court to place the home in receivership, an inspector with the Office of Long Term care said the home did not have a supplier to deliver insulin and other medicine to residents, was unable to pay its employees on a regular basis and had received notices of utility shutoffs.
She said a check from the facility to pay taxes was returned because of insufficient funds, and that "irregularities" in resident trust accounts were being investigated.
The facility also had not paid rent to the property owner in July, August or September, the inspector said.
The state's move to take over the homes was just the second time it had taken the emergency measure since the 1980s.
In May 2018, it took over 22 homes operated by New Jersey's Skyline Health Care, which was in the midst of a nationwide collapse and ultimately sold all its Arkansas facilities.
As set by state law, the goal for receivership is to get nursing homes on stable footing and then return them to the owner, Jerry Sharum, director of the Human Services Department's Provider Services and Quality Assurance Division, has said. The state also can ask judges to order the homes to be sold.
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Besson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 12/27/2019