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Drug Use, Violence, Sexual Threats Reported At Troubled Illinois Nursing Home

May 25, 2005
A troubled Illinois nursing home was the scene of illegal drug use, violence and the threat of sexual assault against female residents, according to a report by court-appointed managers.

Emerald Park Healthcare Center in Evergreen Park would need "tremendous resources" to return to a satisfactory condition and should be shut down if it can't be turned around, according to the report from Pathway Health Services, which has been running the center for the past two weeks.

Earlier this month, the state charged the home was mismanaged and dangerous and should be shut down. A Cook County judge ordered Pathway to temporarily take over operations at Emerald Park, a southwest Chicago suburb. Attorneys for the home's owners dispute the report's findings.

Some of the home's 243 residents have been moved out, including a patient who over the weekend hurled a chair through a third-story window. The report said a "volatile" group of patients still live in the facility, which houses mainly mentally ill and elderly patients, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

"This is significant validation of what the attorney general, Illinois Department of Public Health and the community have said all along: that this facility has serious, gross mismanagement and it needs to go to a new owner or be shut down," said Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Madigan sued Emerald Park last month and criticized the home on several fronts, including the way it monitored and supervised residents with criminal histories.

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