Crowd Boos Plan to Shut Veterans’ Nursing Unit

A boisterous crowd of 200 employees, patients, relatives and city officials packed a cafeteria at the California Veterans Home in Barstow on Friday to protest the state’s decision to close the facility’s only skilled nursing wing amid allegations of patient mistreatment and deaths.

Every time the boos and jeering peaked, Assemblywoman Nicole M. Parra (D-Hanford) called for restraint so she could hear the complaints as chairwoman of the committee on Veterans Affairs.

At one point, 80-year-old veterans home resident Temple J. Ray rolled his wheelchair up to a microphone and said, “It’s a damn fool idea to close any part of this place.”

The emotional session underscored a growing sentiment in this rural high desert community of 20,000: The ward for aging and disabled residents must be reformed but remain open.

Facing a series of citations and fines for alleged substandard conditions, patient abuse and preventable deaths, officials with the state Department of Veterans Affairs announced a week ago that the wing would be closed and its roughly 90 residents moved to state-run veterans homes in either Chula Vista near San Diego or Yountville in Napa Valley.

Joining the chorus of protesters Friday was Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), who accused the department of “putting the lives of veterans at risk by packing them in vans and then moving them to other veterans homes halfway across California.”

“My concern begins with the well-being of veterans who ought to be treated with great respect and dignity; their health should be a top priority,” he said. “I don’t believe the department has done a good job in this matter, or even tried.”

Barstow Mayor Lawrence E. Dale condemned the department for suggesting in a recent memo that “due to the geographic location” of the city, the home was experiencing problems in recruiting and retaining an adequate supply of qualified licensed nurses.

“The Barstow Veterans Home was built as a complete care facility, not a satellite,” Dale said. “You are blaming Barstow for your lack of capability to provide proper care.”

Last week, the home was fined a record $100,000 in connection with the death of an 80-year-old whose deteriorating health was not reported to his physician by the nursing staff, according to investigators.

A day earlier, state officials had announced plans to shut down the ward.

The most recent fine was the maximum possible and came only two months after the facility was penalized $95,000 for failing to prevent a man’s death.

After that incident, one doctor at the home was dismissed, another resigned and nine care staff members were disciplined and reported to professional licensing agencies, said Andrew Kotch, a spokesman for the California Department of Veteran Affairs. The home has not yet disciplined staff members after its $100,000 fine.

“Recent events are what triggered this ultimate decision to close the [skilled nursing facility] at Barstow,” Kotch said in a written statement from Sacramento. “You can draw your own conclusion to the question of the fitness of current Barstow workers to continue providing care.”

Kotch said current residents at the Barstow home, though, are in no danger. It will still house veterans who don’t need nursing care. “There’s still staff there that are qualified and capable of handling the situation,” he said.

The facility faced additional scrutiny in February when California Highway Patrol officers urged prosecutors to file criminal charges against two employees and the acting administrator at the time. The workers allegedly broke the finger of disabled veteran Thomas Joyner when they took a lighted cigarette from him in a no-smoking area.

That case remains under consideration by the San Bernardino County district attorney. In the meantime, the employees involved in the case have been assigned new positions at the facility.

Barstow resident Jeanette Flowers, Joyner’s sister, appeared at the hearing and complained that “the three employees who broke my brother’s finger get to stay but my brother has to leave. That’s just not fair.” She said it will be impossible to routinely visit him if he is moved to Chula Vista.

Closing the doors of any nursing facility -- and forcing out residents -- is an unusual move that regulators try to avoid.

Even in nursing homes with more disturbing patient care problems than those alleged in Barstow, the California Department of Health Services has turned to a bevy of options in hopes of averting the trauma of transferring residents. They include taking over day-to-day operations while searching for a new owner.

“Closure is rare,” said Brenda Klutz, director of licensing and certification for the department. “We want to minimize disruption to residents.”

But such flexibility is not an option for the Barstow home, owned and operated by the state Department of Veterans Affairs. The facility was built and run with state and federal VA dollars, and employs unionized state workers. The part of the home that does not require round-the-clock skilled nursing will continue to operate -- with those funds and workers.

“Selling it to a private contractor would be a very complicated process and the state would probably have to surrender the facility,” Kotch said.

There’s no question that the nursing home’s options had narrowed. It was cited last week for the second preventable death in as many months, so under state law health regulators would have moved to revoke its license. But it was the Department of Veterans Affairs -- not Klutz’s team -- that made the call to close.

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Times staff writer Charles Ornstein contributed to this report.