How does this continue to go on without massive public outrage?
Feds find 'blatant disregard' for veteran safety at VA nursing home, already among the nation's worst
Staffers at the Department of Veterans Affairs nursing home in Brockton, Massachusetts – rated among the worst VA nursing homes in the country – knew this spring they were under scrutiny and that federal investigators were coming to visit, looking for signs of patient neglect.
Still, when investigators arrived, they didn’t have to look far: They found a nurse and a nurse’s aide fast asleep during their shifts. One dozed in a darkened room, the other was wrapped in a blanket in the locked cafeteria.
The sleeping staffers became a focal point of a new, scathing internal report about patient care at the facility, sparked by a nurse’s complaint that veterans were getting substandard care, according to a letter sent late last month to President Donald Trump and Congress by the agency that protects government whistleblowers.
“We have significant concern about the blatant disregard for veteran safety by the registered nurses and certified nurse assistants,” agency investigators wrote in a report about the 112-bed facility. The Brockton facility is a one-star nursing home, the lowest rating in the agency’s own quality ranking system.
List of VA nursing homes and their ranking nationwide:
Copy: 110918-Nursing-homes by USAT - Graphics - Infogram
The Brockton whistleblower, licensed practical nurse Patricia Labossiere, complained to a federal whistleblower agency, the Office of Special Counsel, earlier this year after supervisors ignored her alerts, she said.
“I am a no-nonsense nurse who took a vow to take care of patients,” said Labossiere, who quit in July. “We are there to be kind and treat others as we would want to be treated. I could not believe that this was how we treat the people that fought for our country.”
Labossiere said she saw instance after instance of poor patient care at the facility within days after she started working there last December. She told the federal whistleblower agency that nurses and aides were not emptying the bedside urinals of frail veterans. Nurses failed to provide clean water at night and didn’t check on the veterans regularly, as required, she said. And they often slept when they were supposed to be working.
She offered some specific examples: One patient was having trouble breathing because his oxygen tank was empty. Another fell – his feeding tube got disconnected and the liquid splashed onto the floor – and didn’t appear to have been monitored by staffers for hours.
The VA investigators did not substantiate those specific allegations, saying the patient with the empty oxygen tank suffered no ill effects. Investigators couldn’t confirm that the patient who fell had been neglected because the records had been shredded “in accordance with the local policy.”
Feds find 'blatant disregard' for veteran safety at VA nursing home, already among the nation's worst
Staffers at the Department of Veterans Affairs nursing home in Brockton, Massachusetts – rated among the worst VA nursing homes in the country – knew this spring they were under scrutiny and that federal investigators were coming to visit, looking for signs of patient neglect.
Still, when investigators arrived, they didn’t have to look far: They found a nurse and a nurse’s aide fast asleep during their shifts. One dozed in a darkened room, the other was wrapped in a blanket in the locked cafeteria.
The sleeping staffers became a focal point of a new, scathing internal report about patient care at the facility, sparked by a nurse’s complaint that veterans were getting substandard care, according to a letter sent late last month to President Donald Trump and Congress by the agency that protects government whistleblowers.
“We have significant concern about the blatant disregard for veteran safety by the registered nurses and certified nurse assistants,” agency investigators wrote in a report about the 112-bed facility. The Brockton facility is a one-star nursing home, the lowest rating in the agency’s own quality ranking system.
List of VA nursing homes and their ranking nationwide:
Copy: 110918-Nursing-homes by USAT - Graphics - Infogram
The Brockton whistleblower, licensed practical nurse Patricia Labossiere, complained to a federal whistleblower agency, the Office of Special Counsel, earlier this year after supervisors ignored her alerts, she said.
“I am a no-nonsense nurse who took a vow to take care of patients,” said Labossiere, who quit in July. “We are there to be kind and treat others as we would want to be treated. I could not believe that this was how we treat the people that fought for our country.”
Labossiere said she saw instance after instance of poor patient care at the facility within days after she started working there last December. She told the federal whistleblower agency that nurses and aides were not emptying the bedside urinals of frail veterans. Nurses failed to provide clean water at night and didn’t check on the veterans regularly, as required, she said. And they often slept when they were supposed to be working.
She offered some specific examples: One patient was having trouble breathing because his oxygen tank was empty. Another fell – his feeding tube got disconnected and the liquid splashed onto the floor – and didn’t appear to have been monitored by staffers for hours.
The VA investigators did not substantiate those specific allegations, saying the patient with the empty oxygen tank suffered no ill effects. Investigators couldn’t confirm that the patient who fell had been neglected because the records had been shredded “in accordance with the local policy.”
