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  The Nation's #1 Independent Veterans Web Site Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 06-09-2008 |
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The Nation's #1 Independent Veterans Web Site Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 06-09-2008 |
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Veterans allege there has been a lack of care because of understaffing, improper health procedures and systematic intimidation to keep them from filing grievances or complaints.
Story here...
http://www.normantran Story below:
------------------------- Norman Veterans Center
under investigation
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According to minutes of the meeting,
Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs Executive Director Phillip
Driskill said the investigator will be from outside the system and will
include talking to people who left employment at the center within the
last six months. The legislators will be given copies of the report.
“They are going to go in and look at the whole system,” Lindley said,
adding he had heard from enough veterans to know problems are not
isolated.
State Rep. Wallace Collins, D-Norman, made arrangements for the meeting
with Driskill; Lindley; Susan Simmons, sister of Norman Veterans Center
resident Mike Simmons; and James Shearer, former brother-in-law of Mike
Simmons. Lamb attended the meeting at the request of Gov. Brad Henry.
“There’s so much smoke that there’s got to be some fire there,” Collins
said.
Norman Veterans Center administrator Bob Weeks was in attendance, but was
asked to leave the meeting to allow the family member to air her
grievances. Weeks has been in charge for about three years of the 300-bed
Norman Veterans Center, which remains at capacity often with a waiting
list.
Susan Simmons, a registered nurse for 33 years, detailed problems to the
group, which met for about two-and-a-half hours.
She said injuries at the center are way beyond the occasional accident.
Simmons said one incident occurred when her brother Mike, a 60-year-old
Vietnam veteran and decorated Marine who suffers from
multiple
sclerosis, was left to lie in his own feces for 59 minutes. She was on the
phone with him much of that time and said she heard his continued polite
requests of staff to clean him up.
Some of the feces had dried by that time and they scrubbed his skin to get
it off, leaving it “as raw as hamburger.”
“It looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to him,” she said, when
she observed the injury later. “It’s disgusting.”
She was later told by Weeks that the delay
occurred because one of the aides was on break and unavailable to help,
which she disputes is possible because aides at state agencies aren’t
allowed to have hour breaks, with a half-hour allowed for meals and 15
minutes for a regular break.
Simmons said her brother, who has lived at the center for four years, had
suffered numerous injuries because of inexperienced staff who aren’t
trained sufficiently by the experienced staff.
One of those injuries occurred when an inexperienced aide was using a lift
to move Mike from his wheelchair to his bed, “shearing” his buttocks and
leaving them raw.
“And Mike has had this done to him repeatedly,” she said of the shearing.
She said staff gossips about the patients, which has created a prejudice
against her brother.
Susan Simmons said she requested her brother’s nursing records in April,
which she has yet to receive. She believes that’s because there are
improper notes in his file about her brother.
When Mike Simmons’ art supplies disappeared from the activities room, he
was told by Weeks that they wouldn’t be replaced because it was against
rules and would be unfair to other veterans. Weeks said he couldn’t make
an exception.
Mike filed a complaint and when the art supplies were later replaced by
the center, Mike refused them because he had been told it was against the
rules.
Lindley said he had known and respected Mike Simmons for years, from when
Simmons had the successful advertising and marketing agency Marcom. He
said Simmons had lost his business and his home because of his illness,
but had not lost his smarts.
Susan Simmons said ironically Mike used his marketing skills to help
promote the center, including helping facilitate Hollywood actor James
Garner’s visit to the center in 2006.
Veteran Bruce Goodin has lived in the Norman Veterans Center for seven
years and has similar stories to tell of being injured by inexperienced
aides.
The 56-year-old Vietnam veteran, who also has multiple sclerosis, said
he’s suffering from an infected ankle because of an incorrect move on a
lift by an inexperienced aide. He said the aide ran the back of his leg
into the bed and when he went into spasms, his foot got caught behind the
rail and twisted and skinned the ankle.
“My God, his foot swelled up the size of a football,” said his brother Ray
Goodin. “His foot is so swollen it looks like it’s going to explode. If it
wasn’t this bad, I wouldn’t just make this up.”
Bruce said many times when the aides come in, they already have gloves on
from the previous patient, which spreads infection.
He said one time an aide put fresh sheets on his bed and the sheets had
feces on them because the aide had not changed to new gloves first as
required.
“You have to be careful because our immune
systems are compromised,” Bruce Goodin said.
And Ray Goodin said three veterans were crowded for months in the next
room, only designed for two men.
Bruce Goodin said he had seen more staff fired and leaving the facility in
the last two years when Weeks was administrator, than in the first five
years he was there.
“The staff seems overworked,” said Bruce Goodin. “They are tired all the
time.”
He said they used to have lots of volunteers.
“Now we have zero,” Goodin said.
“(Weeks) has the people intimidated around here and afraid to say
anything,” said Ray Goodin.
Bruce Goodin said he was on the F-1 wing for seven years and it took a
year for him to get a private room on the wing. He was moved abruptly,
given two days notice.
“I was told when I first got here to think of the Veterans Center as my
home,” he said. “The worst thing about it was the way it all came down.”
Bruce Goodin said Weeks “came slamming into my room.”
“(Weeks) stood over me and told me that he only had to give me 48 hours
notice to vacate this room,” Goodin said, with Weeks telling him “the
right side of the unit was too heavy” because he and Simmons lived there.
“And he threw down a piece of paper.”
Goodin said his wing is continually short-staffed, using only one nurse
and one aide on a side with 25 patients.
“What you’ve got is a real bad situation with bad morale,” he said. “And
(staff) calls in sick a lot.”
Goodin said in the center’s Alzheimer’s unit, veterans have had to be
transported to the hospital because of dehydration.
“There is no excuse for them to be dehydrated,” he said.
Bruce Goodin said he no longer is intimidated on
speaking out about what he sees going on around him.
“But the walls have ears,” he said. “And there is lots and lots of
nepotism. You have to be careful about what you say. We are afraid it will
get worse before it gets better.”
Susan Simmons said her brother has high regard for most Veterans Center
personnel, and only complains about inexperienced aides who have hurt him.
That’s gotten him labeled as a “bad patient.”
But she said that’s because her brother and Goodin are still intelligent,
despite their illnesses.
“They can tell the difference between good and bad care and they are going
to voice their complaints … so they label them ‘bad patients,’” Simmons
said.
“(Weeks) is afraid he’d have to go up against two smart people instead of
one,” Ray Goodin said. “They’re paralyzed, but their brains are intact.”
Susan Simmons said she met with a staff physician who demanded Mike thank
the staff when he’s given good care.
“And she said when he cries out in pain and orders people out of his room,
it’s his fault,” she said.
Susan Simmons said if her brother is a bad patient, the staff made him
one.
“You can only jab a dog with a stick so many times … before he’s going to
start to fight back,” she said of his lashing out verbally when he’s hurt.
Mike and Susan Simmons are concerned about potential reprisals for his
speaking out, as are the Goodin family.
“I’m very concerned, and Mike is just stressing out,” Susan Simmons said.
“He’s afraid he’s going to be told that his care is ‘no longer within
their scope of care.’”
“I’m just one signature away from being thrown out of here,” Mike said.
Ray Goodin said he is praying for a new administrator.
“When my brother was getting hurt, I felt like my world was getting blown
apart,” he said. “You’d better not dump on my brother.”
Mike Simmons said he believes things have to get
better and that’s why he’s speaking out.
“Not just for me, but for all the veterans out here,” he said.
Other veterans and their families spoke to The Norman Transcript off the
record, backing up the Simmons’ and Goodins’ allegations.
Lindley said problems with staffing won’t go away, with the “standstill
budget” recently approved by the Legislature.
“It’s a dig-a-hole budget,” he said, noting that state agencies have had
increases in fuel and food costs. “So where are you going to cut? … What
are they going to do?”
Collins, who serves on the Legislature’s Veterans Committee, said it was
ironic that the Legislature celebrates Veterans Day by having disabled
veterans come to the Capitol to be honored.
“Then we don’t back it up with putting money in place to take care of the
facilities that take care of them,” he said. “My main goal is to take care
of the veterans.”
An attempt Friday afternoon to reach Driskill or Lamb was unsuccessful.
Carol Cole-Frowe
366-3538
ccole@normantranscript.com
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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