A newly formed task force should look into patient care at state-run veterans homes now that abuse and neglect have come to light, said a sponsor of the bill that created the group.
The Arkansas Veterans’ Home Task Force formed this month and meets Tuesday at the Capitol. Its primary goal is to find a site for a new veterans home in central Arkansas. The group also has the power to take up patient care issues, said Rep. John Edwards, D-Little Rock. Edwards is both a sponsor of the bill setting up the task force and a member of it.
“It’s pretty wide open what it can do,” Edwards said. The task force is obligated to make recommendations to the state Legislature by Oct. 31. The 22-member panel consists of lawmakers and representatives of most major veterans group in the state.
The Fayetteville Veterans Home is under state and federal regulator scrutiny because of neglect and abuse citations. Federal regulators told state Department of Veterans Affairs administrators the home’s certification for Medicare and Medicaid payments are at risk. The nursing home has 74 residents, according to the latest figures.
State inspectors found last month four employees gave false statements in the injury of a patient whose arm was broken in December. The state department fired three of those employees. The fourth had been dismissed for other reasons, a department spokesman said Friday.
Earlier, state inspectors found a patient had died in a case where the home was cited for neglect. According to statements given to state inspectors, the patient died despite warnings from his physical therapist and a nursing assistant that he was in distress could not be roused.
In both cases, Fayetteville home administrators failed to report the incidents to state regulators as required by state law, later investigations found.
“It’s a shame it took something like this to get everybody’s attention, but it’s got everybody’s attention,” said Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville. Leding’s district includes the Fayetteville home. He is also the House Democratic leader.
Bringing problems to light is the first step in fixing them, said Cissy Rucker, who was appointed as director of the Veterans Department last year. Gov. Mike Beebe appointed Rucker after forcing the previous director to resign. The department’s nursing home in Little Rock was closed after financial audits found missing equipment, lax oversight, illegal fees charged to patients and a facility that needed millions of dollars in repairs.
Task force consideration of care issues would be a godsend, said Martha Deaver, president of Arkansas Advocates for Nursing Home Residents and a frequent critic of the Fayetteville home. “It can’t come a second too soon,” she said.
Rucker believes the new administration of the Fayetteville home is getting problems there under control, but she added contracting management of the home to a private company has been discussed. The home’s problems will be fixed, she said.
The department will “encourage whistleblowing, because you can’t fix things you don’t know about,” Rucker said. “People are now coming forward and reporting. We can do something with the honesty we’re getting now.”
Christine Oldham, quartermaster of the Arkansas chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said she will inform the group’s state commander of Edwards’ plans, but it was her understanding the law setting up the task force was more restrictive than that.
The state Veterans Department has an overseeing board, the Arkansas Veterans Commission. The commission chairman was out of the country last week, a department spokesman said, but commission member and veteran Robert Schoenborn of Jonesboro said the commission would welcome the task force’s attention on patient care issues.
The task force “brings together just about every appropriate agency and interested party,” Schoenborn said. “It could improve the whole situation, and the channels of communication are open far better than they’ve ever been.”
“The events of the last 18 months have shown we need to do a better job for our veterans,” Schoenborn said.
The state commission’s responsibilities and role is not well defined in the law, and neither are the responsibilities of the Veterans Department to keep the commission informed, he said.
The Legislature oversees every other state agency, and that oversight role needs to be applied more consistently with veterans issues, Edwards said.
“With term limits, you could have found quite a few legislators a few years ago who didn’t know we had veterans homes,” Edwards said. “That’s certainly not the case any more. It’s been very encouraging to see the number of people who say they want to help fix this.”
Senate Bill 3 by Sen. Jane English, D-North Little Rock, set the task force up. Edwards said he had wanted the bill written to limit the task force’s authority to the single purpose of looking for a site for a new central Arkansas veterans home, but English wanted a provision granting wider authority. Now he’s glad she did, Edwards said.
“We really just need to take this golden opportunity,” Edwards said. “I really don’t want to squander the chance.