| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |

A Rock County supervisor seeks rules that require the county-run Rock Haven nursing home to more promptly tell the public of state inspections that turn up violations.

Rock County Supervisor Mike Zoril is bringing a resolution to the county’s Health Services Committee tomorrow morning that seeks hard deadlines by which Rock Haven must tell the public and county administrators about inspections and violations of the nursing home.

Zoril says a spring 2022 state Department of Health Services probe at Rock Haven showed social workers and administrators at the nursing home threatened to remove a Rock Haven resident from his room and drop him off at a homeless shelter if he didn’t immediately write out a $4,000 check to pay off a bill the nursing home said he owed.

It was an apparent violation of law that requires nursing home residents remain free from mental abuse, according to a Department of Health Services report obtained by WCLO.

Zoril’s new resolution would require the Health Services Department get word from Rock Haven no later than 45 days after the nursing receives any notice of a regulatory violation. The resolution also seeks the county administrator to sign off on any notice or report by Rock Haven within 14 days of the notice.

Zoril’s resolution also would require Rock County to publish on the county’s website information on any regulatory violation at Rock Haven, along with Rock Haven’s plans for corrective action within 90 days.

Zoril says that would give the county and the public a more transparent view of activity at the taxpayer-supported nursing home.

County Administrator Josh Smith tells WCLO News he’d learned of the 2022 regulatory probe the day it occurred. He says he and the Health Services Committee were told of both the 2022 violations the probe yielded, and the corrective actions that Rock Haven proposed, within a few days of the state finishing and approving the reports.

However, Smith says the county has no set policy that Rock Haven must follow to notify the county of regulatory probes or violations. Smith says in an email to WCLO that he has a “general expectation” that the Rock Haven’s administration would notify him and his office of any regulatory investigations and their outcomes.

Check back at WCLO Radio and Big Radio for more on this story.