$three.four Million Medicaid Fraud Inquiry Hovers Over Nursing Home Where Comatose Woman Was Raped and Had Baby

While that investigation continues, detectives with the Phoenix Police Department not too long ago opened a felony investigation at a nursing dwelling operated by Hacienda HealthCare after a 29-year-old lady who has been in a coma practically her total life gave beginning to a boy there on Dec. 29. The two investigations have introduced intense nationwide scrutiny on Hacienda, Arizona’s largest privately operated long-term nursing firm for folks with developmental disabilities. People in its care have a spread of mental and bodily disabilities.

In current years, Hacienda has additionally been investigated by the Arizona Department of Health Services over the therapy of its sufferers. In 2013, the company discovered male worker on the nursing dwelling being investigated, the Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility, had made sexually specific remarks to sufferers, together with telling a resident that his penis was erect. In 2017, investigators reported that workers freely walked in on sufferers whereas they have been bare and showering.

The lady on the middle of the police investigation has been at Hacienda since she was three. She can’t transfer on her personal, can’t talk and requires whole supervision, in keeping with well being information obtained by The New York Times.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, whose reservation is about 100 miles east of Phoenix, stated the lady was an “enrolled member” of the tribe. The tribe’s chairman and her mom, who was granted everlasting guardianship in 2009, haven’t returned calls searching for remark.

On Friday, the police launched a frantic 911 name from the Hacienda nursing middle when the lady went into labor on Dec. 29. The caller stated nobody knew that the lady had been pregnant. Both the mom and the infant have been recovering at a Phoenix hospital, the police stated this week.

“She was not in a position to give consent to any of this,” Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman, stated on Wednesday. “This was a helpless victim who was sexually assaulted.”

Since the Phoenix police introduced their investigation every week in the past, detectives have collected the DNA of male workers at Hacienda; the state dispatched well being inspectors to verify on the opposite sufferers there; and the corporate’s longtime chief government, Bill Timmons, resigned. Over practically three many years, Mr. Timmons had constructed Hacienda into a serious participant in long-term well being care in Arizona.