Georgia firm fined $100,000, barred from doing business

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

A Georgia nursing home company that formerly operated Westview Manor in Peabody was banned from doing business in Kansas for 10 years and fined $100,000 last week in a court case stemming from events related to a Humboldt nursing home operated by the same company.

AltaCare Corp., of Alpharetta, Georgia, operated Pinecrest Nursing Home in Humboldt until it closed in 2011. When it was closed, the building was left unsecured with records containing patient and employee information in plain sight.

The building was vandalized and broken into numerous times.

AltaCare also agreed to reimburse the attorney general’s office for the cost of the investigation.

Peabody’s Westview Manor was put into receivership in December 2018 after inspectors from Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services found the financial balances of 16 residents were negative, narcotics were missing, the facility had numerous maintenance problems including nonworking toilets, Westview was seriously behind on payments to vendors and a staffing agency, and payroll checks had bounced twice.

Cara Sloan Ramos, spokesman for KDADS, said a company has signed letters of intention to purchase Westview Manor and Great Bend Health and Rehab, another former AltaCare Corp. nursing facility also in receivership.