RCFE Rant-4

RCFE (Residential Care Facility for the Elderly) Part 4

Who runs the show, the State or the Counties?

I should mention RCFEs are regulated by the State of California. They should all be following the same laws, and rules. This is definitely not the case. It appears that each County does things their own way in many cases. Furthermore, each Licensing department seems to do things their own way – which can be totally different from how another County does it.

That could explain why some of the RCFEs we went to never had to do anything or make any changes to get their licenses. Not true for us in an almost brand new expensive house compared to some we saw that were many dozens of years old that were never forced to make any changes. We had to change our locks, widen the doors twice, add locks to drawers and cabinets we used for the residents, add another sidewalk (even though we had one), remove my sons bed from the room in the garage (we had a permit for the room), add straps to the water heater, even though there was one on there by the builder, add a patio door to a room, along with a big ramp for it, etc, etc., etc.

Just that one incident with widening the doors twice cost us thousands, lots of lost revenue because the room could not be used until it passed inspection of the door. I could list a whole slew of these things, but won’t. I will say that some of the inspectors – that’s not their job title, and the people that work with the department are … I better not say it. It is not good.

We’ve gotten written up for some highly dubious “problems”, like how the garbage can was placed, a laundry room door left open, my vitamins in my medicine cabinet in my locked bedroom, my son using a knife to cut the meat when he stopped to opened the door for the “inspector”. The “inspector” wrote him up for not having the knife locked up, even though he was still using it, etc. The inspectors are LPAs and even though they don’t know how to run a facility they have the authority (and gall) to tell us how to run the business. [...]