28 November 2022: Feds Stop New Admissions at NJ Nursing Homes for Veterans

Feds halt new admissions at troubled NJ veterans home as safety, COVID problems remain

This story came out on Friday, 25 November 2022, in the style of a Friday night news dump during a holiday weekend by politicians desperately seeking to avoid attention. We did notice however, and we're making a point of putting it front and center first thing on the Monday morning after the holiday. Here's an excerpt:

The federal agency that acts as the primary funding source for New Jersey's troubled veterans homes began withholding payments this week at the Menlo Park facility after Gov. Phil Murphy's administration failed to fix major problems with infection control, officials confirmed late Wednesday.

The move effectively stopped the Edison nursing home from admitting new residents to the facility, which families across New Jersey depend on to take care of their ailing loved ones, many whom served in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Major Ameila Thatcher, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, confirmed that new admissions "are temporarily paused."

In a statement to NorthJersey.com, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said problems that "significantly impacted the safety of residents" documented in a scathing inspection report over the summer had still not been corrected to the agency's satisfaction.

"Denial of payment for all new admissions began on [Tuesday] because the ongoing quality concerns have not been addressed," said Bruce Alexander, communications director of CMS.

What the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) are effectively saying is they have no confidence in troubled NJ Governor Phil Murphy's actions to date to address the now well-documented problems at the state government-operated nursing homes for veterans. CMMS is using the power of its purse to force Governor Murphy to rectify the problems that his administration has so far allowed to go unaddressed since they permitted COVID to decimate the population of residents at these facilities in early 2020.