By Randall Yip, Executive Editor
(This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health
Journalism’s 2024 California Health Equity Impact Fund.)
California state regulators cited Kei Ai Los Angeles Health Care Center during the height of the COVID19 pandemic on November 16, 2020 for not having a dedicated infection specialist as mandated in a new state directive that month. The skilled nursing facility would be hit three more times over the next 10 weeks for COVID-safety procedures designed to prevent the spread of the deadly disease.
45 residents would die during the time regulators issued those citations against the 300-bed facility, according to records obtained by AsAmNews from the County of Los Angeles through a Public Records Act request.
A check of a state database found Kei Ai Los Angeles endured more deaths than any other skilled nursing facilities in the state. In all 115 residents died of COVID there from May 2020 through December 2022. That’s the period the state maintained a dashboard of COVID-deaths. Skilled nursing facilities such as Kei Ai Los Angeles provide nursing, medical and rehabilitation care.
LATEST STORIES
The medical director of Kei-Ai Los Angeles did not get back to us with a comment after numerous attempts.
No other skilled nursing facility in California had more than 100 COVID deaths. The closest were the 99-bed Rinaldi Convalescent with 78 deaths and the 391-bed Santa Anita Convalescent with 76 deaths. All three facilities are in Los Angeles County.
Crystal Yee’s father Kin Jin Han was among the 115 to die of COVID at Kei-Ai Los Angeles. He died on December 28, 2020. He had been under care there for six years.
“I never understood why Kei-Ai allowed positive COVID patients to come to the nursing home when I thought the elderly were considered the most vulnerable,” she said in a statement made available to AsAmNews through the office of Rep. Judy Chu (D-Pasadena). “Kim Han contracted COVID from a patient that was in his room which was considered non-COVID area who was positive,” she claimed.
Kei-Ai Los Angeles is one of 25 facilities the county designated as COVID facilities under a program designed to find beds for coronavirus patients, although not all ended up taking patients.
30 patients living at Kei Ai Los Angeles during the pandemic were under the care of Dr. Kenji Irie. He says 19 of them died of COVID.
He spoke to AsAmNews and described preventative measures at Kei-Ai LA to protect against the coronavirus as “loose and inadequate.”
Public records obtained by AsAmNews of health inspection reports uncovered numerous notices of violations issued by investigators from local, state and federal agencies for a 25-month period beginning in November 2020.