The case began when a state inspector conducted a fire safety inspection and reported that the plaintiff’s fire alarm monitoring company was unable to reach the municipal fire department dispatch center for more than five minutes due to busy signals. As a consequence, the plaintiff was assessed a civil penalty of $2,000. An administrative law judge (ALJ) concluded that the skilled nursing facility had to do more than merely hook up its fire alarm system and hope for the best. As a Medicare participant, among other things, the nursing facility “must be designed, constructed, equipped and maintained to protect the health and safety of residents, personnel and the public,” according to the code 42 C.F.R. §483.70. With regard to fire safety, the code stated, “The facility must meet the applicable provisions of the 2000 edition of the Life Safety Code of the National Fire Protection Association” (NFPA). §9.6.4 of the Life Safety Code incorporates NFPA 72 regarding alarm systems used “to alert the municipal fire department . . . of fire or other emergency.” For facilities like the plaintiff that had chosen a central station alarm system, §5-2.6.1.1 of NFPA 72 provided that the central station must “immediately retransmit the alarm to the public fire service communications center.”
The state inspector concluded that because the alarm monitoring company was unable to reach the fire department dispatch center for more than five minutes due to the busy signal, the residents were subjected to unnecessary risk and therefore the plaintiff was not in substantial compliance with the code. Because the nursing facility’s residents were in immediate jeopardy, the inspector imposed a $2,000 civil penalty.