Operation of New Jersey’s state-run veterans’ homes, where more than 200 residents died during the COVID pandemic, should be removed from the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and made part of a new state department of veterans’ services, the chair of the state Senate Health Committee said this week.
“We made a promise we would care for [the veterans] at the highest level after they served our country,” said state Sen. Joe Vitale, chair of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee. “We’re not. We’re failing them. Changing personnel here or there won’t make the difference.”
A group of Democratic lawmakers plans to meet Monday to discuss an overhaul of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and develop a proposal to present to Gov. Phil Murphy, Vitale said.
They include Sen. Patrick Diegnan, a Democrat whose district is home to the Menlo Park facility. Moving the homes out of DMAVA control or having a third party come in to run them at least temporarily are options, he said.
“Somebody with experience running nursing homes has to be in charge,” he said. “That’s what we’re really coming together to talk about because what’s happening at the homes continues to be unacceptable.”
The lawmakers are responding, in part, to new reports of problems at the nursing homes.
This week a former executive of the Paramus veterans’ home who served as an anonymous whistleblower during the pandemic’s early days revealed his identity and told NorthJersey.com that additional underlying problems remain at the 336-bed facility, where 87 residents and a staff member have died of COVID.
The whistleblower, David Ofshinsky, former business manager and assistant CEO at the Paramus home, said the veterans homes should be taken away from the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs agency and operated by the state Department of Health because of the lack of health-care expertise and experience among DMAVA leaders.
Nursing homes are only a small part of DMAVA’s responsibilities. The agency’s primary responsibility is to recruit, manage, and train the New Jersey National Guard for rapid deployment along with providing other services such as operating transitional housing for homeless vets, operating a veterans cemetery and providing other services for veterans throughout the state.
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Also this week, federal Medicare officials warned that they could effectively shut down the Menlo Park home by imposing harsh financial sanctions if it fails to correct violations in infection control, abuse and proper training of nurses found during an eight-day inspection in August and September.
Unless the 328-bed nursing home complies with health and safety standards by Tuesday, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “a discretionary denial of payment for all new admissions may become effective.” If the Menlo Park facility doesn’t comply by March 8, it “may be terminated from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
Such severe measures are uncommon. They were imposed at a privately operated Sussex County nursing home, Andover Subacute II, where 17 bodies were found in a shed during the early days of the pandemic. The facility, subsequently renamed Woodland Behavioral Health, was shut down by the state in August.
But the failure to test residents and staff at the Menlo Park veterans home and trace contacts in a COVID outbreak that began there last fall placed all residents and staff in “immediate jeopardy” of a life-threatening illness, inspectors found. And a failure to take steps to prevent abuse and train staff properly also jeopardized resident safety, the inspectors found. COVID has claimed the lives of 72 residents and a staff member of the Menlo Park home.
Diegnan said cutting federal funding to the homes would be the wrong move. “At that point, you’re just harming the innocent,” he said. “Let’s fix it and make it better. You don’t want to harm the people who are there and those in the community who will need the home later.”
Diegnan, Vitale, and three other Democratic senators plan to meet on Monday to discuss “big picture” reforms of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
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“The status quo is unacceptable,” Vitale said, “and it has been for some time. In spite of the legislation we passed, in spite of all the good will and all the promises, it hasn’t changed.
“There has to be a sustainable model of excellence and we don’t have one,” he added. That could mean a separate cabinet-level department with the necessary resources, he said, or “bringing in an entity that understands how to run a nursing home as an operator,” while the state retains ownership.
Besides Vitale and Diegnan, the senators who are to meet Monday are Joseph A. Lagana of Paramus, whose district includes the Paramus veterans’ home; Joseph P. Cryan of Union County, chair of the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee; Vin Gopal of Monmouth County, a member of the Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens committee and former chair of the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee; Diegnan and Vitale, of Middlesex County.
They had gathered earlier in the pandemic to advise on leadership changes in the veterans’ homes and the department, Vitale said. And Vitale convened a hearing in August 2020 on conditions at the Menlo Park home — the only hearing to date to focus on the veterans’ homes.
The legislators, though, stopped short of calling for hearings into the high death toll and continued problems at the veterans homes that families, staff and Republicans have been calling for for more than two years.
Just two months into the pandemic, then Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, and Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., a Republican, announced the formation of a bi-partisan “Review and Recovery Committee” to investigate the Murphy administration’s response to the pandemic.
But Sweeney, a political foe of Murphy’s, felt an immediate backlash from fellow Democrats and the committee never formed.
Sen. Joe Pennacchio, R-Morris, said Thursday that Democrats have instead “circled the wagons” in order to protect Murphy and his administration from scrutiny.
“If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are genuine in their concerns about these continued failings, which I believe they are, they should join us in supporting a full legislative investigation with subpoena power to help identify the problems and develop effective solutions,” he said. “The simple fact is the Legislature has done next to nothing so far, and it hasn’t worked.”
