Search warrant served at Hart County Manor
Hart County Sheriff Jeff Wilson, left, speaks with individuals outside of Hart County Manor after a search warrant was served at the facility on Monday. Photo by Mary Beth Sallee.
Mary Beth Sallee
Managing Editor
Hart Co. News Herald
On Monday, the Hart County Sheriff’s Department served a search warrant on Hart County Manor, a personal care facility in Munfordville.
According to Sheriff Jeff Wilson, “A search warrant was served at Hart County Manor at 205 Bridge Street in Munfordville. An investigation is pending.”
No further information could be released at this time.
Joann Clark of Elizabethtown shared with the Hart County News-Herald that her brother, who will remain unnamed due to patient privacy, has been a resident at Hart County Manor for approximately 18 years. He has been under the facility’s supervision and care as he suffers from two serious mental disorders.
Clark was also at Hart County Manor on Monday when the search warrant was ongoing. It was then that she was made aware from law enforcement of the bed bug and scabies issue at the facility.
“Every time I went down there (to Hart County Manor), I had to strip (his) bed, clean his room, because it would be filthy. I mean absolutely filthy,” Clark said. “…The room that my brother was in, of course they moved him around several times, but before this time, the room he was in had a huge hole in the wall and they had a board over it…You could see the pipes. Well, a snake or anything could have crawled in there. They (employees at the facility) finally nailed it up.”
Hart County Manor is a personal care home owned by Pelfrey Management Group, LLC. Photo by Mary Beth Sallee.
“Then they moved him to another room, but that room there had mold in the ceiling and everything,” Clark continued, adding she thought the place should be closed down.
Last week, the Hart County News-Herald also received a call from a concerned citizen regarding Hart County Manor, who spoke only on guaranteed anonymity.
The citizen said complaints were made to several state agencies, including the Office of the Inspection General (OIG) and the District Ombudsman, regarding the facility’s living conditions. The Ombudsman program is responsible for, among other things, investigating and resolving complaints on behalf of residents at long-term care facilities.
The Hart County News-Herald contacted the OIG Northern Branch in Louisville and spoke with Program Coordinator Nicole Clarkson.
Clarkson said that a complaint against Hart County Manor had been made as recently as April 4, 2024 but would not release any additional information. She also would not confirm if additional complaints had been made. Clarkson also stated that OIG does not announce when inspections will occur, although it can take up to a year after a complaint is filed for a facility to be inspected by the OIG.
“You put a complaint in, and we enter it in. I cannot personally tell you or no one can tell you when we’ll actually go in because all of our surveys are unannounced,” Clarkson said. “…Depending on the severity of the complaint, it can be anywhere from tomorrow to a year from now…People don’t understand we have so many facilities, you know. We try our best to get in to them.”
Sheriff Jeff Wilson, right, spoke with Hart County Ambulance Service Executive Director Joe Middleton, middle, and Ambulance Service Assistant Director Kevin Pettit at Hart County Manor on Monday. Photo by Mary Beth Sallee.
The Hart County News-Herald also contacted the Barren River District Ombudsman Office and spoke with Lynda Love, a Kentucky Legal Aid representative.
When asked if complaints had been received about Hart County Manor in Munfordville, Love replied, “We cannot make comment at this time. For us as an advocacy, agency, our responsibility is to report. We’ve made appropriate reports to the Office of Inspector General and Adult Protective Services. But as far as the public and for any information, we have to refrain from comment on that situation. I can tell you we are addressing it and following every federal protocol and regulation required.”
According to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services website, Hart County Manor is owned by Pelfrey Management Group, LLC., which is owned by Cliff Pelfrey. Upon speaking with the News-Herald, Pelfrey did confirm that he owns the facility.
He could not comment on the search warrant or other allegations being made against the facility, but did state that he purchased Hart County Manor from Michael Vaught (Wildcat Healthcare) in October of 2023.
The Hart County News-Herald is working to obtain further information on this situation through various means, including open records requests per KRS laws, and will provide updates as additional information becomes available. If anyone has information to share, please contact Mary Beth Sallee at marybeth@jpinews.com or 270-528-7985.
Cliff Pelfrey needs to talk..a subpoena will make people talk ..we need immediate help for our elderly . You or I could be placed in one of these facilities today ..Think about what it would be like for us to have to live in these conditions.. THIS ISNT RIGHT TO DO THESE POOR ELDERLY PEOPLE IN SUCH A MANNOR . PLEASE HELP !!!
Also known people playing as handing out medicine has given several times has given a resident a other residence medicine instead of theirs and also not reporting to the emergency department what they had done so they could treat the person with a quicker response without having to do research and test also never wrote any of those employees up because it is best to be left unknown or off record I think it’s deserved that they’re family and found out about medicine changes playing doctor with tackle boxes pills that should been sent back to the pharmacy employees also taken some of the prescription pills for themself and no one does anything about it and if they also look into who handed out the medicine under the administrators decision that would probably see the background of why they’ve been giving out the wrong medicines are pocketed someone’s medicine no choice of who they would like to see for the doctor 45 residents to be seen and changed medicines within 3 hours some doctor
Couple of important notes to be made here.
1) The above referenced facility is a personal care home. While some licensed personal care homes in KY do care for elderly, most freestanding facilities like this care for individuals who have major mental illness. This is an important distinction and worth restating. Personal care homes in KY, for the most part, care for individuals with quite serious mental disorders. The relevance of this pertains to the following:
Everyone can relate to an elderly individual due to knowing someone that is aged. We all age (the lucky ones anyway). Even if it’s just your grandmother or an elderly neighbor, everyone can relate. It’s a familiar genera of the population and we’ve all become accustomed to seeing and interacting with the sweet elderly folks.
Not the same can be said of individuals with mental illness. It’s an extremely small portion of the general population that has had first hand interactions with an individual that frequently experiences psychotic episodes. Whether it be responding to nonexistent internal stimuli (i.e. seeing or hearing things or people that are not actually there) or devastatingly extreme mood swings or having false beliefs and acting on those beliefs, very few members of the general population have had encounters. Of the aforementioned group that has experienced mental illness first hand, only a small portion of that group has been in an environment containing a large number of individuals with severe mental illness.
The devil at play here is ~ the lack of knowledge and understanding. The previous sentence is extremely important, you should go back and reread it, and then again.
Human beings as a whole fear what they don’t understand. “The fear of the unknown” is not just a catchphrase, it stands the test of time because of the validity.
This brings me to my second point:
2) Personal care homes are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. I’ve said that for a very long time. For well over 40 years I have had a first hand account of the personal care home industry in KY. Sadly, it’s been the same ol song and dance, monetarily speaking. As of this writing, 4.24.2024, licensed personal care homes in KY receive a maximum of just over 49 bucks a day. That is it. What’s more, that is IF you can get the commonwealth to pay in full and not jerk you around on collecting the funds or state guardianship to blatantly and knowingly lie or deceive you of earned revenue or if you can keep some random family member of a resident from stealing or misappropriating the resident’s benefits.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.
Please don’t think I am advocating for it to be ok to provide subpar housing, because that is not what is being conveyed here. I am merely pointing out extraneous factors that weigh heavy on already tightly constrained budgets.
When it’s a matter of – do you repair the roof or purchase next week’s food, it makes for a tough situation. It’s a repetitive conundrum with the only solution buried deep within the purse of the commonwealth.
Sadly, as referenced above in an off color remark about red headed stepchildren, the tight financial constraints coupled with a multitude of governing bodies (i.e. Office of Inspector General, Adult Protection and Advocacy, Department of Community Based Services, Adult Protection Services, Life Safety Code, State Fire Marshal, Social Security Administration, State Guardianship, et al…) will eventually prove to be too much and the proverbial doors will slam closed forever. At that point, expect homelessness and crime rates to escalate, hospitals and jails to exceed compacity, and an overall change to things in general. As medication will not be regimented and the delusions will grow stronger and push currently well mannered people to act out of desperation.
Ironically, at that point, the population will be forced to become familiar with mental illness.
Fortunately for all, there are still a few among us who will, mostly out of the kindness of our hearts, opt to carry the burden of care under such scrutinized and deprived conditions.
So the next time you have the undue pleasure of crossing paths with anyone affiliated with personal care homes, a debt of gratitude should be bestowed. Then feel free to go about your day and enjoy life, knowing that we are here, still trying to provide a life for those that can’t provide for themselves.
You’re welcome.
J.L.
i was a resident at hart county manor for 5 half years they stole from us and more i complained the whole time i was there about everything that was going on to the state and ombusman they have had alot of complaints besides me it seem like no one took us serious ….im gladed somthing being done …im tired
They where hiring people with drug addictions to run the facility or just bad attitudes turds others that owner in the picture is also a bad person he was involed we where being punished
Much of what you wrote is not true and the other part of what you wrote is only partially true. Let’s start with $49 per day. PCHs charge $1500 per month, per resident. If the facility has 50 residents, that comes to $75,000 per month or $2500 a day. They pay the staff $9.00 or LESS per hour. Sometimes there is only 1 staff member in the facility (especially at night). Let’s pretend they keep 3 staff members around the clock (which I have never seen done in over 25 years of serving PCHs)…that’s $650 in wages in a 24 hour so the PCH has $1850 a day left to cover food or other incidentals. The PCHs I have serviced do NOT provide transportation, escorts to medical appointments, daily activities, or any type of community interaction. The residents use PACS (free medicaid transportation) to get to what few appts they have. They should have lots of appts but they go years and years without a dental appt, vision exam, or yearly checkup because the PCH staff does not make them appts. Even when they are seen in the ER and the ER recommends followup with Cardiology…no appt is made, no followup. The staff does not “assist them” with their daily needs….sure, once in a while a staff member will assist with a shower but for the most part the residents walk around filthy, not bathed, never brush their teeth, do not use deodorant, clothes are filthy, some urinate on themselves or in their beds – sheets not cleaned or changed. Medication is distributed by any Joe off the street – no specialized training required by the “regulations.” The only requirement to be the Director is you must be 18 yo and a high school graduate. I’m not sure anyone even checks if the person actually is a high school graduate. It is absolutely a horrible way to live and the owners and the directors should be held 100% accountable. However, since there are little to know state regulations regarding the operation of a PCH, nothing is done. You are correct when you say PCH are the red-headed stepchild for the healthcare field but it’s not because of the lack of money – the same families have owned and operated these facilities for over 40 years. You don’t stay in business like that if you aren’t making money and you certainly don’t pass the business on to your children if it wasn’t profitable. The reason PCHs are the red-headed stepchild of in the healthcare field is because our society doesn’t give a crap about severely mentally ill people, we do not want to acknowledge their plight or even inquire as to who is taking care of them…oh, by the way, their care providers are convicted felons, active drug users, verbally and physically abusive staff, sometimes they are working at the PCH while on Work Release from Jail! There are probably more felons employed by PCHs than there are in jail. This is NOT who should be caring for our most vulnerable population and would never be acceptable in a nursing home.
Couple of important notes to be made here.
1) The above referenced facility is a personal care home. While some licensed personal care homes in KY do care for elderly, most freestanding facilities like this care for individuals who have major mental illness. This is an important distinction and worth restating. Personal care homes in KY, for the most part, care for individuals with quite serious mental disorders. The relevance of this pertains to the following:
Everyone can relate to an elderly individual due to knowing someone that is aged. We all age (the lucky ones anyway). Even if it’s just your grandmother or an elderly neighbor, everyone can relate. It’s a familiar genera of the population and we’ve all become accustomed to seeing and interacting with the sweet elderly folks.
Not the same can be said of individuals with mental illness. It’s an extremely small portion of the general population that has had first hand interactions with an individual that frequently experiences psychotic episodes. Whether it be responding to nonexistent internal stimuli (i.e. seeing or hearing things or people that are not actually there) or devastatingly extreme mood swings or having false beliefs and acting on those beliefs, very few members of the general population have had encounters. Of the aforementioned group that has experienced mental illness first hand, only a small portion of that group has been in an environment containing a large number of individuals with severe mental illness.
The devil at play here is ~ the lack of knowledge and understanding. The previous sentence is extremely important, you should go back and reread it, and then again.
Human beings as a whole fear what they don’t understand. “The fear of the unknown” is not just a catchphrase, it stands the test of time because of the validity.
This brings me to my second point:
2) Personal care homes are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. I’ve said that for a very long time. For well over 40 years I have had a first hand account of the personal care home industry in KY. Sadly, it’s been the same ol song and dance, monetarily speaking. As of this writing, 4.24.2024, licensed personal care homes in KY receive a maximum of just over 49 bucks a day. That is it. What’s more, that is IF you can get the commonwealth to pay in full and not jerk you around on collecting the funds or state guardianship to blatantly and knowingly lie or deceive you of earned revenue or if you can keep some random family member of a resident from stealing or misappropriating the resident’s benefits.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.
Please don’t think I am advocating for it to be ok to provide subpar housing, because that is not what is being conveyed here. I am merely pointing out extraneous factors that weigh heavy on already tightly constrained budgets.
When it’s a matter of, do you repair the roof or purchase next week’s food, it makes for a tough situation.
Fortunately for all, there are still a few among us who will, mostly out of the kindness of our hearts, opt to carry the burden of care under such scrutinized and deprived conditions.
So the next time you have the undue pleasure of crossing paths with anyone affiliated with personal care homes, a debt of gratitude should be bestowed. Then feel free to go about your day and enjoy life, knowing that we are here, still trying to provide a life for those that can’t provide for themselves.
You’re welcome.
J.L.
Couple of important notes to be made here.
1) The above referenced facility is a personal care home. While some licensed personal care homes in KY do care for elderly, most freestanding facilities like this care for individuals who have major mental illness. This is an important distinction and worth restating. Personal care homes in KY, for the most part, care for individuals with quite serious mental disorders. The relevance of this pertains to the following:
Everyone can relate to an elderly individual due to knowing someone that is aged. We all age (the lucky ones anyway). Even if it’s just your grandmother or an elderly neighbor, everyone can relate. It’s a familiar genera of the population and we’ve all become accustomed to seeing and interacting with the sweet elderly folks.
Not the same can be said of individuals with mental illness. It’s an extremely small portion of the general population that has had first hand interactions with an individual that frequently experiences psychotic episodes. Whether it be responding to nonexistent internal stimuli (i.e. seeing or hearing things or people that are not actually there) or devastatingly extreme mood swings or having false beliefs and acting on those beliefs, very few members of the general population have had encounters. Of the aforementioned group that has experienced mental illness first hand, only a small portion of that group has been in an environment containing a large number of individuals with severe mental illness.
The devil at play here is ~ the lack of knowledge and understanding. The previous sentence is extremely important, you should go back and reread it, and then again.
Human beings as a whole fear what they don’t understand. “The fear of the unknown” is not just a catchphrase, it stands the test of time because of the validity.
This brings me to my second point:
2) Personal care homes are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. I’ve said that for a very long time. For well over 40 years I have had a first hand account of the personal care home industry in KY. Sadly, it’s been the same ol song and dance, monetarily speaking. As of this writing, 4.24.2024, licensed personal care homes in KY receive a maximum of just over 49 bucks a day. That is it. What’s more, that is IF you can get the commonwealth to pay in full and not jerk you around on collecting the funds or state guardianship to blatantly and knowingly lie or deceive you of earned revenue or if you can keep some random family member of a resident from stealing or misappropriating the resident’s benefits.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.
Please don’t think I am advocating for it to be ok to provide subpar housing, because that is not what is being conveyed here. I am merely pointing out extraneous factors that weigh heavy on already tightly constrained budgets.
When it’s a matter of, do you repair the roof or purchase next week’s food, it makes for a tough situation.
Fortunately for all, there are still a few among us who will, mostly out of the kindness of our hearts, opt to carry the burden of care under such scrutinized and deprived conditions.
So the next time you have the undue pleasure of crossing paths with anyone affiliated with personal care homes, a debt of gratitude should be bestowed. Then feel free to go about your day and enjoy life, knowing that we are here, still trying to provide a life for those that can’t provide for themselves.
You’re welcome.
J.L.
2) Personal care homes are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. I’ve said that for a very long time. For well over 40 years I have had a first hand account of the personal care home industry in KY. Sadly, it’s been the same ol song and dance, monetarily speaking. As of this writing, 4.24.2024, licensed personal care homes in KY receive a maximum of just over 49 bucks a day. That is it. What’s more, that is IF you can get the commonwealth to pay in full and not jerk you around on collecting the funds or state guardianship to blatantly and knowingly lie or deceive you of earned revenue or if you can keep some random family member of a resident from stealing or misappropriating the resident’s benefits.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.
This website is trash. It keeps spamming my comment. Three part comment ahead.
2) Personal care homes are the red headed stepchild of the healthcare industry. I’ve said that for a very long time. For well over 40 years I have had a first hand account of the personal care home industry in KY. Sadly, it’s been the same ol song and dance, monetarily speaking. As of this writing, 4.24.2024, licensed personal care homes in KY receive a maximum of just over 49 bucks a day. That is it. What’s more, that is IF you can get the commonwealth to pay in full and not jerk you around on collecting the funds or state guardianship to blatantly and knowingly lie or deceive you of earned revenue or if you can keep some random family member of a resident from stealing or misappropriating the resident’s benefits.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.
Please don’t think I am advocating for it to be ok to provide subpar housing, because that is not what is being conveyed here. I am merely pointing out extraneous factors that weigh heavy on already tightly constrained budgets.
When it’s a matter of – do you repair the roof or purchase next week’s food, it makes for a tough situation.
Fortunately for all, there are still a few among us who will, mostly out of the kindness of our hearts, opt to carry the burden of care under such scrutinized and deprived conditions.
So the next time you have the undue pleasure of crossing paths with anyone affiliated with personal care homes, a debt of gratitude should be bestowed. Then feel free to go about your day and enjoy life, knowing that we are here, still trying to provide a life for those that can’t provide for themselves.
You’re welcome.
J.L.
Personal care homes are not allowed to bill Medicaid or Medicare by KRS law. They don’t even have a Medicaid billing number assigned to them as a skilled nursing home or hospital would.
So at best 49 dollars for the entire day. That is to cover three nutritious meals and three between meal snacks (all planned by a licensed dietitian), round the clock care to include help with bathing, grooming of the hair, nails, feet and teeth, cable television, tightly regimented heating and air conditioned environment, all medication passes, planned daily activities that coincide with ability and interest prepared and carried out by a dedicated activities director, frequent in house physician visits, arranging of transportation when outside care is required (and quite frankly, often when the nonemergency transport reneges or just doesn’t show it is usually a kind hearted staff member who takes the resident in their personal vehicle, most of the time when they are not even on the clock), plus a whole host of other services.