SCOTTSDALE, AZ — An assisted-living facility has been fined $500 and its owners have agreed to implement safety measures after an 85-year-old man left the facility last summer and died.
Bob Pollmann was a retired teacher with Alzheimer’s disease. He was living at Brookhaven on 131st Place in Scottsdale, an assisted-living facility set in a rural enclave of upscale homes.
He was there less than a month when he left the home unsupervised on a June afternoon. Staff didn’t notice him leaving, according to a police report. When he wasn’t found, the Arizona Department of Public Safety issued a Silver Alert for him.
Two days later, a neighbor found him in a wash behind her home. He wasn’t moving, so she called 911.
“I think it’s the elderly man that went missing,” she told the 911 operator.
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The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), the state agency that licenses long-term care facilities, investigated and cited Brookhaven for failing to have strategies to ensure his safety. A state inspector found the home’s front door alarm was not functioning on the day of the inspection.
Brookhaven was fined $500, according to state records, which is an amount that advocates like the AARP have questioned in cases like these.
"Five hundred dollars, I think we all can agree, that's not a proper price to pay,” said Dana Kennedy, state director for AARP Arizona, in an interview with ABC15 last year.
Until recently, state law capped facility fines at $500 per day for each healthcare statute violation. But last September, a change in law doubled fines up to $1,000. ADHS officials told ABC15 in an email that their inspection related to Pollmann’s death happened before the law changed. So the department was subject to the $500 limitation, they said.
Under a settlement with ADHS, Brookhaven denied any liability or wrongdoing and agreed to safety measures, including:
- Unannounced state inspections.
- A manager on-site at least 15 hours a week.
- Training for all staff on managing residents with dementia.
- Policies for monitoring residents who are at risk of leaving the facility.
Brookhaven’s owners declined to comment to ABC15.
Pollmann’s daughter, Becky Sadler, released a statement on behalf of the family that says, in part: "This settlement does not seem like a deterrent to us. The small fine and measures for improving safety don't seem commensurate with the gravity of the situation of our dad's death."
The ABC15 Investigators found at least a dozen people since 2017 have wandered out of Arizona care facilities and died in the heat. The long-term care industry refers to unsupervised wandering, where a person leaves the facility, as an “elopement.”
Newly proposed state health rules would add requirements for assisted-living facilities that provide services for residents with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. These services are referred to as “memory care.” Facilities that offer memory-care services would be required to immediately investigate elopements and notify the state health department within 24 hours, according to the proposed rules.
Right now, there’s no required reporting and no state agency tracks elopements.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is among those who are pushing for the state to track how often seniors wander away from care facilities.
“How do you solve a problem if you don't even know how big the problem is?” she said in an ABC15 interview last year.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at: anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.
