State Sen. Frank Simpson, R-Ardmore, is the author of proposed legislation to close the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs-run nursing home at Talihina and relocate it to a new facility in a bigger city in the same part of the state, possibly Poteau.
If he succeeds, he also wants to see the veterans home in Clinton be replaced because it, too, is in an old, converted tuberculosis hospital.
Simpson said those outdated, multi-story buildings are detrimental to resident safety, independence and general quality of life and they need to be replaced with modern facilities, designed as a series of small group homes.
Still, he said he is sympathetic to the economic impact the loss of the current facility would have on the area where it’s located. He’s drawn criticism from community leaders in Talihina organizing an effort to save the existing veterans home.
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“This is not a personal vendetta against Talihina,” Simpson. “I’ve been accused of making money off of this, which is outrageous. Since I came to the Legislature, I have really focused my time and efforts on making sure veterans get proper care. I feel this is my calling.”
Mayor Donnie Faulkner said the loss of the vets center could bankrupt his town.
“From the utilities, to the number of jobs at the center. It’s a tremendous domino effect it could have on the schools, county tax base, property values,” Faulkner said. “Why Poteau? There’s been no analysis of the labor pool there. So who’s benefiting? We don’t know.”
Jerome White, a Vietnam veteran of the U.S. Navy and a member of the resident council at the Talihina center, said he knows well some of the challenges, including delays in staff responses to emergencies and an alarming number of staff terminations and departures in recent months.
He once went four or five days without pain medication while waiting for a doctor to approve a refill when the facility was in between staff doctors.
But, White said, he and other residents wonder why they are left to rely on rumors and speculation about the future of the place they call home.
“We wish the folks in Oklahoma City would take the time, trouble and effort to come down here and talk to the veterans,” White said. “That has never come to pass.”
As for would-be whistleblowers, Simpson encourages them to come to him personally and be assured their identities will be protected, and that he will act on their information. After questionable deaths occurred about five years ago in the Claremore veterans center, Simpson said, he met confidentially with about 40 staffers to help enact sweeping changes across the department as a result.
“I do not work for ODVA. I hold ODVA accountable for how they treat our veterans. I don’t mince words and I don’t sugarcoat it. If there’s a problem, I demand that they address the problem,” Simpson said.
Simpson has blasted ODVA over two recent vet deaths at Talihina, taking issue with a couple of statements made by officials at the Oklahoma Veterans Commission meeting in February.
He said Owen Reese Peterson’s death “should have been a sentinel event,” which is defined as an unanticipated event in a health-care setting resulting in death or serious injury to a patient, unrelated to the natural course of the patient’s illness.
Tina Williams, the clinical compliance director for ODVA, has said that despite the infestation of maggots and other conditions at the time Peterson died, his death no longer meets the definition of a sentinel event, so the agency would no longer be counting it as such.
Simpson said he was infuriated after learning that John Carter — chairman of the governor-appointed, oversight state Veterans Commission — made a public statement implying a family was at fault for failing to properly warn ODVA after their relative, an advanced dementia patient, choked to death in late January in the locked-down special needs unit at the Talihina center.
Carter said ODVA staff informed him that the man, Leonard Smith of Sapulpa, “had a long history of ingestions of things perhaps that were not edible and this was not passed onto admissions when he was admitted.”
Smith’s relatives have denied the allegation. They say in the three years he lived at the center, only once did ODVA staff tell them their loved one had choked or had trouble swallowing something — and in that case, it was food.
“It’s shameful we wanted to make it look like the family’s fault,” Simpson said. “That’s a cop-out. We can accelerate their death if we don’t care for them properly – and that’s not just at Talihina.”
Simpson said he hopes the state Veterans Affairs commissioners, all of whom are confirmed by a legislative committee on which he serves, “would be more aggressive. They need to be holding the agency accountable for how we treat veterans. I think we need to get out of the mindset of warehousing vets.”
Simpson also said he is aware of another recent, questionable death in a state veterans home that hasn’t been made public yet.