Attorney General Maura Healey announced that her office has filed a civil suit against a Rowley nursing home and its owner for infection control failures at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. The lawsuit, filed May 27 against Sea View Retreat, Inc. in Rowley and its owner Stephen Comley II, alleges that the defendants failed to comply with state and federal laws, rules, and regulations that required facilities to implement procedures to protect residents of long-term care facilities from COVID-19 from February to June 2020. These included failures to cohort or isolate multiple residents who were suspected, symptomatic, or known to have tested positive for COVID-19 and failures to promptly test at least one symptomatic resident for COVID-19 and implement facility-wide infection control and prevention procedures.
The AG’s Office launched an investigation into Sea View, a Rowley nursing home, in June 2020 based on complaints received by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. According to the AG’s complaint, the investigation revealed that Sea View and Comley failed to implement basic COVID-19 infection control and prevention procedures, including failures to train staff on use of personal protective equipment (“PPE”), provide staff with COVID-19 competency training, conduct surveillance testing of staff and residents, screen staff at entry of the facility, ensure consistent staffing teams dedicated to COVID-19-positive residents to prevent further infection, and properly cohort residents. These lapses in infection control and prevention allegedly resulted in some residents contracting, and in at least one circumstance, dying from, COVID-19.
