This from the Kokomo Tribune:
PERU, IN – A Peru nursing home has been named a candidate for a federal program, designed to improve facilities that have been deemed some of the worst in the country. Aperion Care Peru, located at 1850 W. Matador St. near Grissom Air Reserve Base, is being considered for the Special Focus Facilities program, which is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The program was created in 1998 to target low-quality facilities that require additional scrutiny. Three Indiana nursing homes are currently in the program, including an Aperion Care facility in Michigan City. Fourteen other nursing homes in the state have been listed as potential candidates for the program. The Aperion Care Peru nursing home made the list after receiving 27 health citations during recent government inspections. The state average for health citations at a nursing home is 8.8. Over the last three years, complaints at the facility have resulted in 24 citations. Three of those came with federal penalties and fines totaling nearly $129,000. The largest penalty at the Peru nursing home came in at just under $94,000 in August 2018. That same month, an inspection found the facility failed to prevent sexual abuse to two female residents from a male resident with known sexual behaviors. The inspection also found Aperion failed to ensure an allegation of sexual abuse was thoroughly investigated. Whether the facility will make it into the federal program is unknown. Funding is available for just 88 nursing homes to participate in the program. There are currently more than 400 facilities that are listed as potential candidates. The nursing homes that do make it into the Special Focus Facilities program are visited in person by survey teams twice as frequently as other nursing homes. The longer the problems persist, the more stringent CMS becomes in the enforcement actions that will be taken. CMS said it updates the list of facilities in the program every month. The list of potential candidates was released last month in response to a request made by U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey, both of Pennsylvania.