8 November 2022: New Inspection of NJ Veterans Home Shows Major Issues Still Exist Years After COVID Deaths

New inspection of NJ veterans home shows major issues still exist years after COVID deaths

The lack of consequences for government officials responsible for either overseeing or providing care at New Jersey's state-operated nursing homes for veterans related to 2020's COVID nursing home deaths has led to a very predictable result. Here is an excerpt from NorthJersey.com's Scott Fallon and Lindy Washburn 8 November 2022 report:

When COVID-19 swept through the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home at Menlo Park, killing more than 100 residents in early 2020, administrators, lawmakers and even Gov. Phil Murphy vowed changes would be made to ensure better care of the elderly men and women at the state-run facility.

But a team of state Health Department inspectors found the opposite during an inspection over the summer.

A 293-page inspection report cited the facility for four separate violations of nursing home standards that put all of its residents and staff in "immediate jeopardy" — the most severe and widespread level of harm in the enforcement arsenal. Among the citations is failure to contain the spread of COVID in a November 2021 outbreak that lasted for months due to a lack of basic infection control, testing and contact tracing....

Menlo Park, along with its sister home in Paramus, already had one of the largest death tolls of any nursing home during the pandemic. There have been 72 confirmed resident deaths at Menlo Park along with 39 probable deaths in which residents who were not tested died of COVID symptoms at the height of the pandemic.

Paramus had 86 confirmed and eight probable deaths. New Jersey's third state-run veterans home in Vineland had 14 confirmed deaths.

For more than two years, Murphy has repeatedly said his administration would conduct a "full accounting" and a "post-mortem" at the homes to ensure the health and safety of future residents. But Murphy has never defined what he means and there is no indication he has launched an investigation. Only one legislative hearing has been held on the veterans homes by a Senate committee in August 2020 that explored some of the reasons the death toll was so high.

The new report is the first indication that promised reforms haven't come to fruition.

Democratic party politicians in New Jersey's state legislature have blocked any probe of what happened in New Jersey's nursing homes during the COVID pandemic, claiming it would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Biden administration.

We can find no evidence in the news media that any progress has been made in that probe for nearly a year. The absence of effective action by the Biden DOJ and New Jersey state officials to investigate the negligence and other serious abuses that occurred at New Jersey's veterans homes during the pandemic now means none of those problems are being fixed.