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HARRISBURG -- The Pennsylvania Department of Aging oversees 52 county agencies across the commonwealth, assessing them every year to ensure they comply with state regulations for keeping older adults safe from abuse or neglect.
But in 2021, it directed its small cadre of protective services specialists to drop everything and focus on just one agency: the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA).
The extraordinary step was triggered by deep concerns among the department's top officials over PCA's staffing shortages and delays in investigating cases.
For the next nine months, state specialists worked around the clock to help PCA handle investigations, including speeding up the timeline for making contact with potential victims and providing them services to minimize their risk of injury -- or worse.
"It was an absolute mess," said Peter Hans, a former protective services specialist at the Department of Aging who was assigned to assist Philadelphia. "It was so distressing."
Hans said he encountered cases that had remained unresolved for over a year and ones in which an older adult had died during an active investigation -- yet PCA was unaware of the death.
Though aging officials say the agency has made improvements since then, PCA continues to have the worst track record in the state for complying with strict regulations meant to keep older adults safe from harm, according to data obtained through public records requests.
Many of its cases, the data show, aren't investigated within the 20-day state deadline. It has also failed annual compliance assessments by state officials in five of seven recent years examined by Spotlight PA. In the remaining two years, it wasn't monitored at all.
Records obtained by Spotlight PA through sources show problems ranging from poor paperwork to failures to contact medical professionals to delays in investigating cases.
In the meantime, deaths during open investigations have steeply risen in recent years, and Philadelphia has been particularly affected. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, nearly a third of older adults who died statewide during open investigations lived in the city and were being served by PCA.