3 December 2022: NJ Governor Murphy Turns to Private Sector to Take Over State Government-Run Nursing Homes for Veterans

Murphy seeks to privatize management of troubled NJ veterans homes ravaged by COVID

In a stunning development, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is turning to the private sector to bail out state government-run nursing homes for veterans. We'll have more analysis after the excerpt from this story:

Two years after they suffered some of the highest COVID deaths tolls in the nation and with problems still persisting, Gov. Phil Murphy took the unusual step Wednesday to outsource the management of New Jersey's three troubled veterans homes to a private company.

The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs will seek a vendor to manage "systemic changes" and provide "qualified, administrative staff" to run the homes in Menlo Park, Paramus and Vineland, Murphy said in a statement issued late Wednesday.

The move comes weeks after the release of an inspection that found poor infection control measures continuing at the Menlo Park home, where a long outbreak of COVID this year killed more than a dozen. Federal officials stopped payments last week for new admissions until reforms are made and threatened to stop all payments by March. Murphy also sent a three-member Health Department team to shore up infection control and other poor practices at the home....

The Paramus and Menlo Park homes were already two of the biggest COVID disasters in the U.S. long before the latest inspection report.

The facilities gained national attention in spring 2020 when more than 200 residents died at the start of the pandemic.

The Paramus home was found to have major infection control problems that included allowing COVID-positive residents to mingle with those whose COVID status was unknown. Menlo Park staff members nearly revolted after management stopped them from using the home's supply of face masks while Murphy's office helped devise disciplinary procedures for those who took them.

We view Murphy's move as one of desperation. It is a de facto admission his administration's management of New Jersey's nursing homes for veterans has been an unmitigated failure. It is also an admission his administration has no ability to turn around the situation at the three veterans home it fully controls by replacing their current managers with other state government officials. It is, plain and simple, an admission of the failure of his leadership.

New Jersey's lawmakers, especially those who are belatedly supporting this change, now need to take the next logical step of fully investigating what happened at New Jersey's nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The mismanagement at New Jersey's nursing homes for veterans demonstrates those problems clearly go all the way to the top of New Jersey's state government. That mismanagement also applies to the policies Phil Murphy and his top administrators imposed during the pandemic. Policies that included foolishly copy-catting Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which negatively impacted all nursing homes in New Jersey.

It's long past time to get to the bottom of it all.