A former Lake View Manor administrator on Wednesday urged state officials to force new management on the troubled Lawrence nursing home.

“Somebody needs to come in and take the place over,” said Michael Warren, who resigned Nov. 23, shortly after realizing the home had failed its third major inspection in three years.

Last month, Department on Aging inspectors cited the home for 28 deficiencies, three of which involved harm to residents.

“The place is salvageable,” Warren said. “It’s not that bad, really. But it’s not going to get better until new management comes in and Mr. (Charles K.) Pomeroy is out of the day-to-day picture.”

Pomeroy owns the 52-bed facility with his parents, Charles P. and Lureen Pomeroy, of Topeka.

Warren said Pomeroy thwarted repeated efforts to correct the home’s shortcomings.

“He runs the place. He won’t let go,” Warren said, noting that Pomeroy hired and fired employees and controlled the home’s finances.

“I was there 13 weeks, and I never saw the payroll,” Warren said. “I couldn’t tell you which bills were paid and which ones weren’t. He did it all.”

State law requires a nursing home administrator to be trained and licensed. Pomeroy lacks the credentials to run the home.

Lake View Manor fails inspection again (12-15-04) State cites care home for new violations (8-17-04) Owners of troubled nursing home fire administrator (6-15-04) Nursing home passes muster (04-24-04) Troubled nursing home awaits its fate (04-04-04) Nursing home faces withheld subsidies (3-17-04) Lake View could lose federal funding (2-24-04) Lake View vendor seeks intervention from state officials (1-28-04)

Department of Aging officials said they hadn’t ruled out the possibility of forcing Lake View Manor into receivership.

“That’s certainly an option,” said department spokeswoman Barb Conant. “We are working with the feds on this — there’s a process that we’re mandated to follow; we have to stay within the statutory framework.

“But whatever we do, the goal is to get the facility back into compliance and minimize the disruption of residents and their families.”

In an interview Tuesday with the Journal-Word, Pomeroy said Warren had “up and quit on me without notice,” leaving the home without a licensed administrator.

“That is not true,” Warren said. “I would never walk out or abandon someone like that. I’m not that kind of person.”

Instead, Warren said, after reviewing the inspectors’ findings with their Aging Department supervisor, he presented Pomeroy with three propositions.

“I said I would run the place, but he couldn’t be in the building,” Warren said. “Or, he could hire a management company and I would work for them, but he’d still have to leave the building. Third, I said if he wanted to close the place, I would help him do that.”

Warren said Pomeroy rejected all three proposals.

“At that point, I told him I couldn’t stay because the situation wasn’t fixable,” Warren said. “I resigned.”

It was not unusual, Warren said, for Pomeroy to be in the building “12 to 14 hours a day, including Saturdays and Sundays.”

Contacted Wednesday, Pomeroy disputed Warren’s account.

“This is all very complicated, and I’m not going to get into it,” Pomeroy said. “His information is not correct. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Warren isn’t the first administrator to accuse Pomeroy of interference. In June, the Pomeroys fired then-administrator Dick Boswell who had tried to lessen Pomeroy’s role in the home’s day-to-day operations.

Weeks later, Boswell’s successor, Susan Roberts was fired, she said, for proposing that Pomeroy vacate his apartment at the facility.

Pomeroy’s handling of personnel matters has not served Lake View Manor well, Warren said. “When I left, there wasn’t a director of nursing (DON), the activity director wasn’t certified and we didn’t have a dietary manager,” he said. “The DON they have now is from a temp agency.”

Advocates for residents of Kansas nursing homes said they’d been disappointed in the Department on Aging’s slow response to Lake View Manor’s poor performance.

“At the very least, there needs to be a licensed administrator in charge of running the facility, and clearly that’s not happening,” said Margaret Farley, a Lawrence attorney and a former executive director at Kansas Advocates for Better Care.

“Both the state and the feds have the authority to step in and make that happen,” she said. “At some point, the question becomes, ‘Why haven’t they?'”