14 February 2023: NJ State-Run Nursing Home for Veterans Allowed to Resume Admitting New Patients After COVID Deaths

Admissions resume at NJ veterans home where dozens have died from COVID

This report provides an update to the situation of two nursing homes for veterans that are directly operated by New Jersey's state government. The two veterans homes are notorious for the excessive number of COVID deaths they recorded in early 2020.

Admissions to the state-run Menlo Park veterans home have resumed after improvements were made to control the spread of infections at the facility where dozens have died from COVID-19, state officials said Tuesday.

The development comes two months since federal officials began to withhold payments for new residents after the Murphy administration failed to fix problems outlined in a scathing inspection report last year.

Inspectors over the summer determined that residents were in "immediate jeopardy" of both a life-threatening illness and potential abuse even after the home already had one of the highest COVID death tolls in the nation.

If the Menlo Park veterans home sounds familiar, it's because NJ Governor Phil Murphy implicitly acknowledged no-one in New Jersey's state government is capable of competently running nursing homes:

In December, the Menlo Park CEO was ousted as Gov. Phil Murphy called for a private company to provide management at the home.

Menlo Park and its sister facility in Paramus gained national attention three years ago when more than 200 residents died at the height of the pandemic. Murphy and several legislators called for reforms, including passing new laws to help nursing home residents, but those efforts appeared to have done little at Menlo Park.

The Biden administration's Department of Justice is conducting a criminal probe of COVID deaths at these two New Jersey state government nursing homes for veterans in 2020. There has been no visible indication of that probe's progress for months. The leaders of New Jersey's state legislature have refused to conduct their own probe, citing the DOJ's criminal probe as a justification for not pursuing any investigation.

The report also describes what has been done to improve the care at the veterans home enough to allow it to begin admitting new patients.

The home, which is run by the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, updated "infection control processes, testing protocols, and contact tracing," Major Agneta Murnan, an agency spokeswoman, said in an email. "Staff competency evaluations and education have increased, as well as the frequency of rounds conducted by supervisory staff to ensure the proper use of infection control practices."

The actions that produced these improvements took less than two months to implement. What does that say about how these nursing facilities were being operated under the control of NJ Governor Phil Murphy's administration?