Woodmere nursing home director falsified records, AG says

A health care worker from East Williston has been indicted on a charge of providing a state investigator falsified patient care records at a Woodmere nursing home in 2012, officials said Friday.

Riadel Manzano, 44, was indicted March 22 by a Nassau County grand jury and was arraigned before Judge Meryl Berkowitz on Friday in Nassau County Court, New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said.

She had been arrested on June 10 by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit after authorities said she provided an investigator with false paperwork that a patient at the Woodmere Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, where she was director of nursing services, had been monitored every 30 minutes by staff — when Manzano knew that was not the case, Schneiderman said.

Schneiderman said a doctor had ordered the patient be monitored because “he had previously fallen repeatedly and was injured as a result of the falls.” The investigator had come to the nursing home as the result of a complaint.

“Licensed health care professionals have a solemn responsibility to ensure that their patients are properly cared for,” Schneiderman said in a statement Friday. “My office won’t tolerate those who endanger the well-being of some of our most vulnerable citizens, or those who attempt to cover up abuse and neglect.”

Manzano is charged with first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and tempering with physical evidence.

She is due back in court May 13.

Three other defendants have already entered guilty pleas in connection with the case, Schneiderman said.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”