California Attorney General Rob Bonta secured a settlement against a Contra Costa County skilled nursing facility resolving allegations of understaffing and patient abuse and neglect. The settlement resolves claims that for five years, San Miguel Villa subjected its patients to poor care due to understaffing and effectively rendered a number of its services useless. The settlement amounts to a total of $2.3 million, with California receiving $1.2 million. In June 2017, the California Department of Justice’s Division of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse (DMFEA) responded to a report from the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California (USAO) involving allegations of overmedication of residents at San Miguel Villa. The USAO requested DMFEA assistance in the investigation. The investigation, conducted by DMFEA and the USAO, analyzed residents’ medical charts, surveys from the California Department of Public Health, prescription records, and publicly available staffing information from 2012–2017 — the time frame when the alleged mistreatment occurred. The investigation uncovered evidence of understaffing at the facility resulting in harm to residents, such as increased falls, patient-on-patient violence, weight loss, and overmedication to render patients more manageable.
