The Atlanta Journal-Constitution collected thousands of public records from a variety of agencies to conduct an unprecedented examination of Georgia’s private-pay senior care industry.
Among those records, the AJC analyzed Department of Community Health inspection reports for every assisted living community in Georgia and all of the state’s personal care homes with 25 or more beds for the period of 2015 through 2018. The AJC also collected the state’s databases of fines and other enforcement actions levied against these homes.
To check for any appeals of state actions, the newspaper gathered and examined hundreds of documents from the state Office of Administrative Hearings in cases related to care facilities that the newspaper is studying. The AJC also reviewed state Certificate of Need records to determine how many requests the state was processing for new care facilities, and collected Department of Public Health inspection reports for the dining facilities operated by the care homes.
For any home where DCH reports had allegations of abuse by caregivers, the AJC obtained and studied police incident reports to try to determine whether the allegations were being referred to law enforcement agencies. The newspaper then expanded its requests for police reports after discovering that cases of possible criminal conduct were not being referred to law enforcement, and that cases reported to police were not reflected in public DCH reports.
For more detailed information on some incidents, the AJC reviewed dozens of civil lawsuits and criminal case files, and reporters spent hours in court observing criminal proceedings. Reporters also interviewed dozens of family members, home operators, trade organizations and experts.
The AJC’s project began more than two years ago when AJC reporter Carrie Teegardin began looking into questionable bond deals that had financed senior care facilities in Georgia. That investigation raised questions about the quality of care and adequacy of oversight for the entire private-pay senior care system in Georgia. Teegardin and her editor, Lois Norder, began exploring how the newspaper could study the industry and provide the public access to facility-specific records to help families make informed decisions about care for their loved ones.
Early this year, after Teegardin and Norder had obtained thousands of documents, the AJC began building a project team. AJC data specialist Nick Thieme was brought in to convert the documents into datasets and help to analyze information. Reporter Brad Schrade joined the team to help research issues, interview residents and their families and seek out others knowledgeable about concerns. Data journalist Emily Merwin DiRico joined to help create a website to provide consumers with information on the homes that was not easily available from the state. Another data specialist, Jennifer Peebles, helped with data analysis and communications with the facilities; she was joined by data intern Anila Yoganathan. Other key members include Pete Corson, who worked on visual presentations; photographers Hyosub Shin and Bob Andres and videographer Ryon Horne; copy editors Cameron Tankersley and Liam Miller; and print page designer Mike Perkins.
THE REPORTERS
Carrie Teegardin is a veteran Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative reporter.
In 30 years at the AJC, Teegardin has written articles on a wide range of topics from health care to consumer affairs to criminal justice. financial journalism. She has won numerous state and national awards and in 2009 was named the Atlanta Press Club’s Journalist of the Year.
She was a lead reporter on the newspaper’s “Doctors and Sex Abuse” series in 2016 that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting and several other national awards.
A graduate of Duke University, Teegardin grew up in Circleville, Ohio. She is the mother of two teenagers and lives in Atlanta’s Grant Park Historic District.
Brad Schrade is an Atlanta native who first worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the 1990s before moving to Nashville to join The Tennessean newspaper. He rejoined the AJC in 2013 as an investigative reporter. He has received numerous journalism honors, including a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for work as part of a team at the Minneapolis Star Tribune that uncovered safety breakdowns and deaths in the state’s child care system. He was lead reporter on the AJC’s investigation into police shootings that helped prompt legislative reform of the state’s grand jury system in 2016.
A graduate of University of Georgia, Schrade grew up in Roswell and is married to AJC journalist Rose French. He enjoys coaching their two sons in baseball, basketball and soccer.
