Another View: Care at state Veteran Home

Care of veterans — including those still on active duty — is an issue that continues to rear its head throughout the nation.

While there are stories of good treatment of troops, there also are questionable situations, such as that at Walter Reed Medical Center and at the Arizona State Veteran Home in Phoenix.

Last spring, the State Veteran Home was found by inspectors to be mismanaged and neglectful toward the veterans who were in the 200-bed facility.

Just as in the Walter Reed case, the aftermath led to changes, including the resignation of state Department of Veterans’ Services director Patrick Chorpenning — he’s suing the state over the resignation, saying he was forced to do so — and it led the state Legislature to give the Veteran Home an additional $6.1 million to increase staffing.

And, of course, there were fines against the facility to the tune of more than $20,000.

The hope was that efforts in the past year would have solved the problems.

But that may not be so.

Last week, state health inspectors made a brief declaration that the facility was putting its patients in immediate jeopardy — the worst rating a nursing home could get. That, according to inspectors, came after a patient who couldn’t care for himself was discharged, driven home and left to fend for himself, according to The Associated Press.

The governor’s office said the staff at the State Veteran Home dispute the allegations, and so two state agencies face off over the incident.

The state needs to quickly get to the bottom of this situation. It needs to determine if the immediate jeopardy label that was placed on the home for a few hours was worth what occurred. And if it was, state officials need to again take steps to figure out how to improve care at the facility.

Our veterans served this nation and deserve better care than what has been shown in the past. Poor care should be unacceptable.

Sierra Vista Herald