Park Rapids assisted living facility makes state-ordered changes

PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — A Park Rapids assisted living facility was ordered to beef up its alarm system after a dementia patient was found wandering along busy Minnesota Highway 34.

Care Age Country Home’s alarm and other safeguards were determined by the Minnesota Department of Health to be inadequate in warning staff to the man’s wandering tendencies.
On June 9, two Care Age employees received a report of the man wandering a quarter mile away from the facility.
Between 2010 and June of 2012, there were 11 incidents in which the client was wandering out of the facility, the Department of Health report report states.
Owners Chris and Lynn Niemeyer were given the report Aug. 31 and had 30 days to rectify the deficiencies.
“Everything is corrected,” said Lynn Niemeyer. “We had a door alarm that was not being set appropriately and we had to make some corrections here with our staff and change some other safety policies and procedures just so that we could have some increased monitoring in place, make sure everybody’s kept safe.”