Former staff members of a Waterville nursing home say they reported issues of abuse and unsafe staffing conditions at the facility, which is now facing a lawsuit over the death of a resident whose family says he was neglected.

Shenee Foster said after she started working for Mount Joseph at Waterville in 2021 as a traveling nurse, she made multiple reports to management that another nurse had failed to give a resident, Daniel Crommett, his anti-seizure medication and that his seizures were getting worse.

“Absolutely nothing was done,” Foster said.

Crommett died in December 2021 — less than six months after he entered the nursing home. Crommett’s family is now suing the facility and its owners, accusing Mount Joseph of neglecting the 48-year-old, who lived with mental and physical disabilities and had been placed there after a fall.

The nurse who had been responsible for his care was fired soon after, was later convicted of reckless endangerment of a dependent person and temporarily lost his nursing license.

Maine Department of Health and Human Services records show that, in the years since Crommett’s death, officials have investigated complaints at the facility and found several licensure violations, including inadequate staffing and failing to investigate or report incidents of alleged abuse. At one point in 2022, a report shows the department was looking into nearly 20 complaints against Mount Joseph.

A state report from that year says some residents were not receiving showers for weeks at a time and, in 2024, the state found the facility had not met minimum staffing ratios for several day shifts that year.

A DHHS spokesperson said in September that the department had “recently conducted investigations related to received complaints” at Mount Joseph and was awaiting results. The department did not respond to messages seeking updates.

The Crommetts’ lawsuit claims Michael Biderman, who purchased Mount Joseph in 2021 with another investor, Akiko Ike, and an affiliated partner, charged Mount Joseph an inflated rent and intentionally understaffed the facility to siphon money into other companies.

Biderman said by email last month that the facility did not contribute to Crommett’s death.

“Mount Joseph’s denies that it caused or contributed to Mr. Daniel Crommett’s death,” Biderman wrote. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the Crommett family for their loss, and would like to assure our current and future residents, their families, and our community that the health, dignity, and safety of those entrusted to our care remain our highest priorities.”

‘WEREN’T GIVING US THE RESOURCES’

Christina Oelmann, who worked as a certified nursing assistant at Mount Joseph from 2021 to 2022, said she reported to Maine DHHS that the facility was dangerously understaffed, resulting in the neglect of residents.

In one instance, Oelmann said, she and another worker were caring for more than 40 residents during a 12-hour shift.

“No matter how hard I worked on a shift, I could never keep up with the needs that they had because they weren’t giving us the resources to take care of them,” she said.

The state received Oelmann’s complaint and visited the facility in September 2022 to investigate, according to a letter from DHHS that Oelmann provided to the Morning Sentinel. A state report indicates her complaint was one of nearly 20 complaints and four reported incidents being investigated at the time. According to the report, the department investigated the facility for issues related to quality of care and required record keeping.

The investigation found several regulatory violations, including that the facility failed to meet residents’ bathing needs and did not notify the family and physician when a nurse allegedly pushed a resident. The incident was also not documented in the medical record, according to the report.

During the same investigation, another resident said they had developed a urinary tract infection after laying wet for an hour, according to the report.

“I’m 90 years old,” the resident told a state investigator, “and I pray every day the Lord will get me out of this hell hole.”

Following the investigation, the facility agreed to several corrective actions, including reeducating staff on reporting incidents.

In 2024, when the state determined the facility was in violation for not investigating or reporting an incident in which a resident was reportedly tied to a wheelchair by family, Mount Joseph agreed to reeducate staff about resident rights, abuse, restraint use and incident reporting, according to a report.

DHHS did not respond to questions last week about Oelmann’s complaint or whether it has taken any action against the facility’s license as a result of any violations.

DHHS licensing reports publicly available online for the facility only date back to late 2022.

Oelmann said that when she worked at Mount Joseph she saw staffers report issues to management, but the complaints went nowhere. That’s why she reported them to DHHS and why, she said, she later resigned.

“I couldn’t deal with the guilt that I had,” Oelmann said, “because I knew all the people I was taking care of were consistently neglected.”

Lawyers for Biderman and Ike, Mount Joseph’s owners, said they had no further comment when reached in September about the allegations from former staff members. The lawyers did not return a message seeking comment later that month about DHHS investigations into the facility.

‘SHOUTING INTO THE ABYSS’

Krista Crommett and her father visited her twin brother Daniel at Mount Joseph every day, but said they were not alerted by staff when he had a 10-minute seizure or after various falls and doctor’s visits. Once they noticed the warning signs, the family said they tried to get him transferred to another facility, but there were no beds available anywhere else.

“We were shouting into the abyss, trying to find another placement for him,” his elder sister Carrie Francis, 55, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, said in an interview.

When Krista Crommett, 52, of Brunswick, found her brother bruised and injured, she said she demanded he be sent to the hospital.

“I wanted him out immediately, so that’s why I called 911,” she said. “They were not acknowledging the fact that he looked like he was in severe pain, that he had bruising, that he had that purple finger.”

Crommett died in the hospital two days later, on Dec. 9, 2021.

Daniel Crommett’s father and sisters are suing Waterville Center for Health and Rehab, which does business as Mount Joseph, its owners and affiliated companies, seeking damages for negligence, abuse, neglect and wrongful death.

The lawsuit, filed in Cumberland County Superior Court in August, alleges Marius Ramirez, who worked as a nurse at Mount Joseph, did not give Crommett his anti-seizure medication for at least four days in 2021, falsified his medical records, administered improper medication that can increase risk of seizures and, at one point, physically restrained him, causing bruising.

Attempts to reach Ramirez, who is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, by phone and email were unsuccessful. Mount Joseph terminated Ramirez’s employment the day after Crommett died, the lawsuit says.

Foster, the traveling nurse, told the Maine Attorney General’s Healthcare Crimes Unit as part of its investigation into Ramirez that she had reported to management that Ramirez was not giving Crommett his medication and that his seizures were getting worse.

After expressing those concerns in a “detailed note” to an administrator, according to the lawsuit, Foster was summoned to a meeting with Mount Joseph leadership where she was “criticized for reporting on fellow staff and causing trouble.”

‘WHAT THEY ARE DOING … ISN’T SAFE’

After Crommett’s death, Ramirez also faced several criminal charges, including three counts of endangering the welfare of a dependent person, one count of assault and two counts of falsifying health care records, according to the lawsuit. In 2023, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor-level count of reckless endangerment of a dependent person and served a 30-day sentence, according to Kennebec County Superior Court records.

In February, the Maine State Board of Nursing allowed Ramirez to regain a probationary nursing license after reprimanding him and fining him $500.

As part of a consent agreement Ramirez signed with the board, he admitted to mistreatment of four Mount Joseph residents, including not administering medication, not changing the dressing on a resident’s wound and failing to document or assess a resident’s fall that resulted in a hospital visit. He also admitted in the agreement to sleeping during his shift on several occasions.

Ramirez is required to be supervised by another nurse and could regain his full license after meeting requirements that include completing at least three years of employment as a nurse “and/or enrollment in a nursing education program,” the consent agreement says.

Asked why the nursing board approved Ramirez for a probationary license, spokesperson Kim Esquibel pointed to state regulations about disciplining nursing licensees and said the board protects consumers through “appropriate use” of its authority to take those actions.

In 2022, Oelmann and another nurse created a Facebook group called “Boycott Mount Joseph of Waterville.” It’s described as a group calling for employees to boycott the facility because “what they are doing to staff and residents isn’t safe.” The group had 102 members as of this month.

In the group, past and present employees are encouraged to report wrongdoing at the facility that they believe is not being addressed by management or the state.

Carrie Francis, Crommett’s sister, said that, when her brother was at Mount Joseph, her family had considered hiring a private nurse to stay with him so he could receive better care.

“He was not somebody that we just stuck in a nursing home and forgot about,” she said. “He was very much a part of our family.”

Staff Writer Ethan Horton contributed to this report.