Another Fort Worth nursing home has been identified as one of the nation’s worst, feds say
A second Fort Worth nursing home has been designated one of the worst in the nation by the federal government, after years of repeated fines and citations for health and safety problems.
Remarkable Healthcare of Fort Worth, 6649 North Riverside Dr., was added to the nation’s Special Focus Facility list in January, according to a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The most recent version of the list was made public in February.
Remarkable Healthcare of Fort Worth joins a list of 87 nursing homes generally considered to be “among the most poorly performing facilities” in the U.S., according to the Center for Medicare Advisory. In January, federal regulators identified Fort Worth Southwest Nursing Center as one of the worst in the nation. It remains on the list as of February.
Remarkable Healthcare of Fort Worth has 120 beds, according to its license, but usually houses about 70 people each day, according to federal data. The nursing home has been fined 48 times in the last three years, and has paid more than $315,713 in fines. In January 2022, as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was spreading faster and more easily than any earlier version of the COVID-19 virus, state surveyors visited the nursing home to find that staff had not separated COVID positive residents from those who had not yet contracted the virus.
The nursing home’s administrator told the state inspector that “given how highly contagious the new omicron variant of COVID-19 was, the nursing home decided to treat the negative COVID-19 roommates of COVID-19 positive residents as positive since they had already been exposed.” The administrator said he had not spoken with Tarrant County Public Health nor his state health department program manager about letting patients with COVID share rooms and wings with patients who were not yet infected, a violation of state guidelines.
Remarkable Duo LLC owns 72% of the nursing home, according to federal records. That LLC is registered to Jon McPike of Southlake, according to the Texas Comptroller’s online database. McPike said via a text message that “Remarkable Healthcare’s top priority is to provide stellar quality of care in a hospitality environment. Remarkable Healthcare has continued to achieve excellent patient outcomes, despite the recent regulatory focus. The Remarkable Healthcare Team stands behind the exceptional care we have provided to all of our patients. We look forward to working closely with HHSC for guidance through a more detailed survey process than was experienced prior to the Covid pandemic.”
The Special Focus Facility program was created in 1998 as a way for federal and state authorities to identify “the lowest-performing facilities” in the nation by looking at the number of deficiencies and the severity of those problems, according to the Center for Medicare Advisory. The program was designed to keep a closer eye on nursing homes and assisted living facilities with the most serious long-term issues, and some facilities have improved after being identified. In October, the Biden administration announced new rules for these nursing homes as part of a larger re-evaluation of homes and assisted living facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
