The Health Department has ordered the Park View Nursing Home, in Providence, to immediately correct the inadequate staffing that led to repeated falls by a patient.

The patient, who suffered three injuries in 11 falls between October and the end of May, was declared in “immediate jeopardy” late last month and moved to another floor in the nursing home.

Four other residents were found to have fallen multiple times because they lacked supervision. One suffered a fractured hip and elbow and cuts to his face that required stitches. Another resident was hospitalized with a hip fracture.

The Health Department also ordered Park View, at 31 Parade St., to hire an independent “quality monitor” to advise the home on meeting state and federal laws, file twice-monthly progress reports, and seek department approval before admitting any new patients.

Those orders remain in effect, but the immediate-jeopardy finding was rescinded Tuesday after a survey team found that the nursing home had fixed all conditions that carried a risk of immediate harm, said Raymond Rusin, director of facilities regulation. The quality monitor is now working with the nursing home on making improvements, which must be complete by Aug. 13, he said.

“This is primarily about accidents and prevention of accidents. We cited staffing,” Rusin said.

Margaret Vaccaro, Park View administrator, said the nursing home has brought its staff up to acceptable levels. She said she expected to be in full compliance with regulations by July 28, if not sooner.

“Most of our severe deficiencies have been corrected,” Vaccaro said. “The most important part was getting the staffing up, and everything else flows from that.”

The nursing home, which now has 63 residents, has not admitted any new patients since the Health Department’s order, issued July 11, Vaccaro said.

The relatives of every Park View resident received a letter describing the Health Department’s action. Vaccaro said no one asked to move a patient out.

“I feel that the quality of care is good here,” she said. “I’ve been here 34 years. I have low turnover in my staff.”

In addition to the problem with falls, health inspectors found that Park View did not provide enough activities, left patients in their rooms during activities they would have enjoyed, failed to provide someone who spoke their language to interact with them, and used restraints improperly.

The activities director lacked the required credentials and, when asked about tailoring activities to patients’ preferences, told the inspectors that she “does not have time to play with them,” according to the inspection report.

“Is it a bad place? Is it happening deliberately? No,” said Roberta Hawkins, the state’s long-term-care ombudsman. “But it’s ineptness…. As far as I’m concerned, there was a lot of neglect and a lot of abuse. When you leave them in their room and give them nothing, and no one comes in to talk and interpret, that’s isolation and that’s abuse. Imagine being older, no family, and being in a country where nobody speaks your language. You might as well be in a jail cell.”

Vaccaro, the administrator, said the activities director was being replaced, and that increasing staff would solve the problems with bringing patients to activities. She also asserted that she did have staff members who spoke the patients’ languages, which include Spanish, Cambodian and Creole, and they merely failed to document their interactions with patients.

The Health Department declares “immediate jeopardy” — meaning the nursing home’s failure to follow regulations could injure or kill a resident — about two or three times a year, Rusin said.

But the action against Park View was the second immediate-jeopardy ruling in a month. Briarcliffe Manor, in Johnston, also faced such a declaration June 22 because of two patients with bed sores, and Briarcliffe remains under watch by the Health Department.

Asked whether anything unusual were going on, Rusin said, “We do one survey at a time and we find what we find. It’s hard to gauge. Here’s a facility [Park View] that I would say historically had a good track record. We did an annual survey in January that was not bad. Things can happen very rapidly in that environment.”

The Park View patient who had fallen 11 times and who was declared in immediate jeopardy suffered from dementia, osteoporosis, wandering behaviors, and an unsteady gait. Although her care plan called for supervision when she walked, three of her falls were not even witnessed. Her injuries were a bruise to the knee, blood under her skin on the back of her head, and skin tear on her right ear. Although she repeatedly fell, the nursing home took no action to prevent future falls, according to the inspection report.

This resident lived on a hall with 14 other residents and only one nurse’s aide per shift. The aide could not supervise the resident when caring for others.

The Health Department’s 44-page statement of deficiencies also found that Park View did not keep care plans up to date, failed to provide physical and occupational therapy to a patient recovering from a stroke, was administered poorly, and did not have a quality-assurance program to identify and correct shortcomings, among other failings.

ffreyer@projo.com