At Thomasville’s Pine Ridge nursing home, reaction to a January ice storm showed that corporate owners Principle Long Term Care had allowed such poor planning that residents were left in immediate jeopardy, state officials said. The owner of dozens of North Carolina nursing homes, Principle had far too few employees operating the site and was employing an administrator who didn’t use the place’s disaster plan.
History of neglect related to staffing shortages at Pine Ridge has been well documented. The most recent report about ignoring an emergency plan makes things worse.
Staffing shortages at the jail in uptown Charlotte, exacerbated by COVID-19, have prompted North Carolina health officials to ask the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office to reduce its inmate population. The state says current conditions “jeopardize the safe custody, safety health or welfare” of inmates and jail staff.
When state inspectors examined jail records following James Michael Anderson's death, they found eight occasions over a three-day period when inmate checks were not done in a timely fashion.