Improvements Let

‘Special Monitoring’

Be Lifted At Centers

Administrator Jeff Emhof ‘Excited’

Progress Recognized, Oversight Eased

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – Cooperstown Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing has achieved improvements that has allowed it to be “graduated” from a federal program that identified deficiencies in the local nursing home.

Administrator Jeff Emhof received a letter today from Sheila McGarvey, director of the state Health Department’s Division of Nursing Home Surveillance, notifying him the “Special Focus Facilities” designation has been lifted.

McGarvey’s staff has had the local nursing home under special monitoring since Nov. 29, 2016, when it was still being operated as Focus At Otsego.   Cooperstown Center has since acquired the facility from Focus.

The state acted after Focus employees in August 2016 had been arrested for leaving a patient seated in a wheelchair, uncared for, for 48 hours over the previous Memorial Day Weekend.  The case eventually led to the conviction of Focus President Joseph Zupnik and the company’s CFO for creating conditions that allowed the neglect.

In today’s email to the facilities Family Council and similar entities, Emhof said he was “pleased and excited to announce the receipt of the long-awaited letter releasing Cooperstown Center from the Special Focus Facilities designation. I look forward to the future as we continue to promote the well-being of those we serve every day.”