Anchorage Daily News

The owner of the embattled Mary Conrad Center has agreed to sell the home within 60 days, state health officials said Wednesday.

The health department seized control of the nursing home last Thursday after a five-day investigation, revoking its license and saying it posed an "immediate danger to the health, safety or welfare" of its roughly 90 residents.

The state found medication errors, unclean kitchens and residents with unattended injuries, among other problems, said Public Health Director Beverly Wooley.

On Wednesday, the state announced it has agreed to give the center a provisional license covering the next two months, while the owner looks for new buyers. The temporary license allows the center to continue receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding and to pay its employees and bills, Wooley said.

But state employees have taken over as top management for the center and will remain so. Several former employees -- including the nursing home administrator -- are gone, she said.

The Cook Inlet Housing Authority sold the nursing home to a business called RainDance Healthcare Corp. last year. RainDance is owned by Andrew Turner, who previously ran one of the country's largest nursing home chains.

Turner has joined or formed several companies that provide nursing home services since resigning from a New Mexico health care provider a year after it filed for bankruptcy.

A woman who answered the phone at Turner's home in Washington state Wednesday said Turner wasn't available -- it was his anniversary and Christmas Eve and he was out shopping, she noted -- and said to call back after the holidays.

For now, the administrator for the state-run Anchorage Pioneers' Home will also handle day-to-day operations at the Mary Conrad Center, Wooley said.

Find Kyle Hopkins online at adn.com/contact/khopkins or call him at 257-4334.

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