Local News in Brief : Reprieve Possible for Nursing Home

A last-chance inspection of an Inglewood nursing home has prompted county health officials to recommend reversal of a federal decision to cut off the facility’s government insurance payments.

St. Erne Sanitarium, a 276-bed facility serving mostly low-income medical and psychiatric patients, faced a minimum 60-day cutoff of Medicare and Medi-Cal payments after a county inspection in August found more than 90 health violations, including unsanitary conditions and improper dispensing of medication.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration office in San Francisco approved a county recommendation to end payments to the nursing home. But federal officials granted St. Erne’s request for another inspection.

Stuart Chasen, a supervisor in the county’s health facilities division, said county inspectors who returned to the facility Sept. 15 found that although “there are still numerous deficiencies,” the most serious problems had been corrected and that conditions met minimum standards for government insurance payments.