"Independent report slams handling of coronavirus outbreak at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home; witness describes walking the veterans ‘to their death’" by Hanna Krueger and Matt Stout Globe Staff, June 24, 2020
The findings of a scathing independent investigation released Wednesday show that leaders at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home made “utterly baffling” mistakes in responding to a devastating coronavirus outbreak that killed at least 76 elderly residents.
The 174-page report, ordered by Governor Charlie Baker and conducted by former federal prosecutor Mark W. Pearlstein, chronicles a profound government failure, laying blame on a facility devoid of leadership during the most consequential days of the outbreak and plagued by long-festering management issues that came to a head during the pandemic.
“Even the best preparations and most careful response cannot eliminate the threat of COVID-19,” the report said, “but this does not excuse a failure to plan and execute on longstanding infection control principles and to seek outside help when it is required to keep patients safe — indeed, the extraordinary danger of COVID-19 makes these steps all the more important.”
”Veterans who deserve the best from state government got exactly the opposite,” Baker said at a news conference Wednesday, “and there’s no excuse or plausible explanation for that.”
Actually, there is but I will reserve comment for now.
The superintendent of the home, Bennett Walsh, was placed on leave in March. The state’s secretary of veterans’ services, Francisco Urena, resigned Tuesday. Urena directly oversaw Walsh.
The report concluded that Walsh was unqualified to lead the home and that the Baker administration, which appointed Walsh and his overseers, knew of his shortcomings well before the outbreak, one of the worst in the country.
His administration’s failure to properly supervise Walsh contributed to “the tragic failure” at the home, Baker said.
In the most glaring failure to contain the virus, management merged two locked dementia units on March 27, a decision investigators described as a catastrophe.
One wants to believe it was all incompetence in the chaos of confusion; however, that is simply cover for motivations that are incomprehensible to most people.
The decision meant 40 veterans were crowded into a space designed to hold 25, providing what the report called the “opposite of infection control.” A recreational therapist who was instructed to help with the move said she felt like she was “walking [the veterans] to their death,” the report said.
One staff member said she “will never get those images out of my mind — what we did, what was done to those veterans,” and a social worker staffed in the combined unit described suffering veterans crowded together in cots in hot rooms.
“I was sitting with a veteran holding his hand, rubbing his chest a little bit,” the social worker told investigators. “Across from him is a veteran moaning and actively dying. Next to me is another veteran who is alert and oriented, even though he is on a locked dementia unit. There is not a curtain to shield him from the man across from him actively dying and moaning.”
(I can't really comment because I'm holding back tears and I know after the previous VA scandal I shouldn't even be shocked or surprised, but we are in many ways looking at negligent manslaughter at best or premeditated murder at worst -- likely the latter since orders were given based on plans and models and simulations. Heck, Baker is even taking responsibility above while the report trots out a couple scapegoats)
After the units were consolidated, the death toll accelerated at an alarming rate, a surge the home’s leadership partially anticipated, the report found.
An employee, whom the report did not name but the Globe confirmed to be 62-year-old Luis Rodriguez, was asked to deliver 13 body bags to a dementia unit, shortly before it was consolidated with another unit. A day later, a refrigerated truck arrived to accommodate the anticipated body count.
Social worker Terri Gustafson, who has worked at the home for 21 years, told investigators she saw assistant director of nursing Celeste Surreira point to a room and say, “All this room will be dead by tomorrow,” according to the report.
Investigators placed most of the blame for the mishandling of the outbreak on the home’s leadership team. Union officials, who have long complained about conditions at the facility, said the report’s findings were appalling.
“The report has these people openly admitting that they knew there was COVID-19 rampant in these units and still bullying staffers and idling by while veterans die,” said Corey Brombredi of SEIU 888, which represents most of the home’s care staff. “It is criminal to me.”
Deep sigh before saying yeah. No one will be held accountable, as usual, and this outrage will soon fade in the glare of a second COVID-19 wave that will begin killing the young folk. That seems to be the next wave if what the predictive programming called the pre$$ is to be paid attention. Can't say they don't tell you where they are going.
The report also detailed the rocky tenure of Walsh, who investigators say was ill-suited for his job as manager of one of the largest long-term care facilities in New England. As previously reported by the Globe, Walsh had no previous health care experience and is believed to have been tapped by the Baker administration in part through his family’s deep political connections in the region.
Typical political patronage and machinery you have see in Ma$$achu$etts forever. No big deal there.
Investigators found that Walsh was a divisive leader who saw massive staff turnover during his tenure and had to attend anger management classes. The Globe reported in May that Walsh got into a dispute with a fellow employee in March 2018 and threatened to “belt” him while clenching his fists. During Walsh’s tenure, which began in June 2016, 274 employees left the Soldiers’ Home, according to documents obtained by the Globe.
The report also criticizes Urena for failing to take proper steps to address substantial and longstanding concerns about Walsh. Veterans’ Services general counsel Stuart Ivimey also resigned as a result of the report.
William Bennett, Walsh’s attorney and uncle, said in a statement that Walsh disputes “many of the statements and conclusions in the report” and argues he was not given the chance to respond to them, though he did not specify which findings he would challenge.
“We are also disappointed that the report contains many baseless accusations that are immaterial to the issues under consideration,” Bennett said, adding that he and Walsh are “reviewing legal options.‘'
Urena indicated in a message to a reporter that he would send a statement on the report but had not done so by Wednesday evening.
The report also addresses the issue of when the state was informed about the severity of the outbreak. The governor said previously that he was “appalled” by the lack of reporting from the facility and that his office quickly deployed the National Guard after learning of the situation, but investigators found that while Walsh sometimes reported information that was inaccurate and incomplete, he did not purposefully conceal coronavirus cases or deaths and updated Urena throughout the outbreak.
Why does the state always have to hide and hedge what it knows to CIOA?
Baker said Wednesday that “the full extent of what was going on there was not made clear” in Walsh’s reports, a complaint echoed by staffers and family members after Walsh publicly released a batch of e-mails in May in an attempt to exonerate himself of wrongdoing.
Baker called the findings “gut-wrenching. I think the thing the report makes absolutely clear to all of us is that the Department of Veterans’ Services, our administration, did not do the job we should have done in overseeing Bennett Walsh and the Soldiers’ Home,” he said. “That’s on us.”
I'll take that as a guilty plea.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said he was “disturbed” by the report and will ask the House to create a special oversight committee to conduct its own probe. Attorney General Maura Healey, the Justice Department, and the state inspector general all have ongoing investigations into the home.
Healey said the report “lays bare systemic failures of oversight by the Baker Administration in adequately preparing, staffing, and responding to this crisis to protect our veterans.”
:-(
Staffers who endured the chaos of the outbreak and family members whose loved ones were ravaged by the virus said they appreciate some of the truth coming to light, but acknowledge it brings little solace.
“The Pearlstein report hits you right in the face. It’s the truth,” said Sue Perez, whose father, James Miller, lived in one of the dementia units that was merged, “but it comes a little too late.”
Miller died March 30 at 96 from complications of the virus.....
The same government that he risked his life for basically killed him after he survived the war. Wow.
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It's leadership that is responsible:
"Poor information, leadership flaws exacerbated Holyoke Soldiers’ Home crisis" by Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff, June 24, 2020
The house of cards that was the COVID-19 plan at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home began toppling with the very first case of the deadly virus, according to a damning state report released Wednesday.
The date: March 21, four days after a disoriented veteran in the dementia unit had been tested because of coronavirus symptoms.
That night, the Soldiers’ Home notified the state Department of Public Health of the veteran’s positive test, as required, but what followed was a series of baffling decisions that delayed an emergency response by the state and presumably compounded the spread of the virus in the hilltop facility that houses approximately 250 veterans.
Over the next few weeks, at least 76 veterans would die of COVID amid an escalating tragedy that unfolded largely out of public view. The catastrophe was exacerbated by a days-long string of poorly communicated and misunderstood information that began flowing to state officials from Superintendent Bennett Walsh, according to the state review.
Transparency was lacking throughout the ordeal, according to the report.
Less than two hours after the first positive test, Walsh e-mailed state Veterans’ Services Secretary Francisco Urena, who supervised Walsh, that “we have isolated said veteran and quarantined the unit.”
Later that night, at 1:21 a.m., Urena passed along the report to Daniel Tsai, acting secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services. Later that morning, Tsai informed Marylou Sudders, the HHS secretary who had been named to lead the state’s COVID task force, but that information — shuttled along a trail from Walsh to Urena to Tsai to Sudders — was incorrect. The infected veteran had not been isolated pending the results of his test, but instead continued to mingle with other vulnerable elderly residents.
Before continuing, I need to comment on that. It's going up the chain of command and it's time for a bed check. If you accept the narrative that COVID is everything they say it is, then this is akin to what the nurse in NYC exposed. Deliberate infection of a vulnerable population whose costs far outweigh their usefulness in the eyes of our eugenicist societal managers and government officials. Otoh, if COVID is more fiction than fact the same dynamics still apply. Sickness -- seasonal flu -- killing an already vulnerable population, happens every year.
The life-threatening missteps did not stop there. Eventually, two dementia wards would be combined into one unit crowded with veterans — infected, suspected, and uninfected alike.
Nurses floated between wards that held COVID patients and wards that did not. Upwards of 80 staff members and an additional 84 veterans tested positive, and more than a week would pass before top state officials learned the full extent of the crisis.
Walsh was placed on administrative leave March 30, shortly after Sudders reprimanded him in a phone call, expressing “outrage and disappointment” over discrepancies in the number of deaths reported at the facility.
The state’s figures for victims at Holyoke were significantly lower than the actual figure for more than a week after the first test result. The discrepancy arose because Walsh — as required by the state — had reported only those fatalities where a veteran had tested positive for COVID-19.
That requirement “explicitly did not require disclosure of the deaths of people suspected of having COVID-19, but for whom a positive test result had yet to be obtained,” according to investigators.
Top state leaders did not understand that distinction, the report said, and that lack of understanding helps explain the confusion in a March 29 phone call where Sudders and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse disagreed over the number of deaths.
The mayor, who had been in contact with an alarmed union official, told Sudders that eight deaths had occurred. Sudders said he was mistaken, and that there had been only two. In reality, the home at that time had recorded four positive COVID deaths and four suspected fatalities.
Sudders was furious with Walsh.
“A sign of strength is asking for help,” she said in a subsequent phone call that included Walsh, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who had no prior experience in health care administration. Sudders later said she felt “deceived or lied to,” according to the state report.
Imagine how we all feel out here after decades of ongoing deceit from our leaders and government, and would you trust her with your kids?
The breadth of the tragedy apparently stunned state officials in Boston, according to a timeline reconstructed by investigators. As the crisis expanded, Walsh had conveyed a sense of control to state officials, they said.
In a phone call with DPH epidemiologists on March 25, Walsh did not “ring any alarm bells,” although he expressed concern about having enough personal protective equipment and staffing, the health officials said, but two days later, Walsh asked Urena for National Guard assistance to augment his staffing. Until that time, investigators said, Urena recalled that he did not have “a sense that the place was being overrun” by COVID-19.
Urena also said he had not been told of the plan to combine the two dementia wards, and that Walsh had asked for the Guard with “a level of calmness,” but at the home, signs of outrage were emerging.
In addition, Walsh was becoming irritated with Morse’s alarms about the evolving crisis. At 8 p.m., Urena spoke by phone with Morse and Walsh, who each confirmed that eight veterans had died at the home, instead of the two that Urena had just reported to top HHS officials. Urena said this was the first time he had heard the information.
After the call, Morse texted Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito with the report of eight deaths, setting off a flurry of contacts involving Polito, Sudders, Urena, Morse, and Governor Charlie Baker, among others. Sudders began assembling an emergency team to report to Holyoke in the morning.
At 1:36 p.m., acting HHS Secretary Tsai texted Urena that “I will be sending a simple letter to Superintendent Walsh relieving him of his duties/terminating him effective immediately.”
Sudders was more succinct: “Just fire him. I’ll deal with any fallout.”
Yeah, it will last long about as long as it takes to inter their remains.
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Certain people sure seem above it all, don't they?
Related (page B2):
"State officials reported Wednesday that the coronavirus death toll in Massachusetts had risen by 48 to 7,938 and that the number of people testing positive for the virus had climbed by 172 to 107,611, as key metrics monitored by the state lingered at low levels relative to the springtime surge. The numbers reflected both confirmed and probable deaths and cases. When confirmed cases only are included, the tally is 7,752 deaths and 102,762 cases. The state reported 42 new confirmed-case deaths, and six new probable deaths. It also reported 111 new confirmed cases, plus 61 probable cases. The state also reported that 7,369 new individuals had been given the molecular coronavirus test, bringing the total of individuals tested to 790,223. The total number of molecular tests that have been administered rose to 995,705. The state also reported that new antibody tests had been completed for 532 people, bringing that total to 65,845. Meanwhile, two of the four key metrics that the state is monitoring to determine the pace of reopening stayed stable. Two ticked up slightly, though they still remained relatively low. Meanwhile, a fourth metric, the three-day average of COVID-19 deaths, stayed stable for the second day at 23 on Sunday; however, that number has dropped 85 percent since April 15....."
Also see (page B3!):
"Full disclosure on deaths at nursing homes will take time, state officials say; New law mandates detailed reporting of COVID-19 cases but governor is moving to scale it back" by Todd Wallack and Robert Weisman Globe Staff, June 23, 2020
The Globe has pretty much buried the mass murder that occurred within the nursing homes, a massive scandal that the pre$$ is whitewashing.
State public health officials say they need more time to comply with a new law requiring them to provide the precise number of COVID-19 deaths and cases at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other senior residences throughout Massachusetts.
The above brief I posted, meanwhile, has all sorts of numbers being thrown at us, scary numbers, without out context and based on either their bogus tests or outright lies. Time after time, we find out later is partial information, no information, what state claimed is all, blah, blah, blah. Damage done, so to speak.
The Department of Public Health has so far provided limited data about outbreaks at the facilities, following pressure from the news media, lawmakers, and advocates.
Do I even have to note the hypocrisy and disingenuousness at this point?
A bill sponsored by Representative Ruth Balser, Democrat of Newton, mandating that the state significantly ramp up reporting about long-term-care sites, was passed by the Legislature late last month and signed by Governor Charlie Baker early this month.
The agency said it hopes to provide additional data in “coming weeks,” but did not provide a date.
“DPH is currently working to implement all requirements of the new data reporting law,” spokeswoman Ann Scales said in a written statement.
You like lip service, because that is what that is.
Scales also said the state has already provided more data than many other states and has earned the highest marks from a national COVID tracking project for its reporting efforts.
Adding insult to injury, she pats herself on the back about what a great job they have done despite the neglectful mismanagement and thousands of deaths!
Still, details on coronavirus outbreaks at individual assisted-living facilities are particularly sparse. Currently, the state’s weekly published summaries lack information on the number of deaths at each assisted-living facility, information that is available in New York and Connecticut, for example.
Details are sparse (I can't imagine why).
Related:
"Coronavirus hospitalizations in New York have dipped just below 1,000 for the first time since March 18, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday. The state also has recorded 17 new COVID-19 deaths, “one of the lowest numbers since we started,” Cuomo said on CNN’s “New Day.” A day earlier, while announcing a mandatory 14-day quarantine for anyone coming to New York from states with high viral spread, he had emphasized his state’s dramatic turnaround from the early days of the pandemic. What started as the nation’s hardest-hit hot spot now has one of the slowest-rising case counts in the country, though its overall death toll remains the highest, both in raw numbers and relative to population. Cuomo contrasted his approach to other states that have been quicker to open up and are now seeing rising infections and hospitalizations."
"Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that New York and two neighboring states would begin requiring certain out-of-state visitors entering their states to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival. The restrictions, which also cover New Jersey and Connecticut, will be based on specific health metrics related to the coronavirus, Cuomo said....."
Looks like the nursing home scandal in New York has already been buried by the pre$$.
These fatalities are not included in the DPH’s death toll at long-term-care facilities, a number that is approaching 5,000 — more than 60 percent of pandemic-related deaths in the state, and the public health agency provides infection numbers at assisted-living facilities and nursing homes only in broad ranges, such as 11-30 or greater than 30. The figures combine cases of both staff and residents, making it difficult to tell which homes have blocked the virus from spreading between residents and employees.
You read the above and you realize the horror sketched out and reported by Bloggers is closer to the reality than the daily tripe of propaganda pushed forth by the pre$$ on a daily basis.
Advocates insist the precise figures are important, both for researchers studying ways the facilities can contain the virus and for family members who are trying to protect their loved ones.
“You cannot understand the full extent of the problem without the numbers,” said Alison Weingartner, executive director of Massachusetts Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.
The state has begun reporting nursing home fatalities but has so far declined to provide the exact toll for facilities with four or fewer deaths, instead listing deaths in a “1-4″ range.
Before Baker signed the measure into law, the DPH said it was withholding the precise number of deaths at nursing homes with few deaths to make it harder to identify individuals who had died, but their names can typically be found in publicly available death certificates and obituaries, and information on deaths has long been considered public record in Massachusetts.
Baker is also seeking to scale back some of the new reporting requirements. The governor has filed a bill that would eliminate a mandate to publish data about infections at other types of elderly housing, including independent senior living sites. The residences, often affiliated with assisted-living facilities, are not regulated by the DPH or the elder affairs agency.
What is he trying to hide -- or wash off?
In a letter to lawmakers, Baker said it makes sense to collect data from nursing homes and other health care providers, but not from private landlords who lack access to residents’ health records.
Balser, who sponsored the legislation requiring greater disclosure, expressed disappointment that the Baker administration has yet to comply with the law and is instead proposing alterations. Balser also expressed frustration that the state is reporting only the more limited information weekly, rather than daily, as the law requires.
“It’s both less frequent and not as comprehensive as the statute requires,” she said. “The families and the larger public have a right to know what happens in these institutions. Most of the deaths in the state have been in these institutions. Their residents are the most vulnerable, and we need to make sure they’re getting the care they need.”
They took your elderly beloved away from you when they needed you most, the monsters.
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Now they are going after the kids:
"State guidelines for when Mass. schools reopen: masks, meals in classrooms, no temperature checks; Baker expected to release plan on Thursday" by James Vaznis and Meghan E. Irons Globe Staff, June 24, 2020
When schools across Massachusetts reopen this fall, it will be unlike the start of any other academic year: Students, starting in the second grade, and all adults will need to wear masks; desks will likely face forward, ideally 6 feet apart but not less than 3 feet; and students will likely eat breakfast and lunch in their classrooms, according to state guidelines obtained by the Globe Wednesday.
One measure the Initial Fall School Reopening Guidance doesn’t require: daily temperature checks before students enter the building, leaving that job up to parents. The guidelines also don’t mandate COVID-19 testing, at least at this time.
The guidelines, however, leave perhaps the biggest question unanswered: the exact date when students will actually return to in-class instruction.....
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As long as they fill their quotas and where a turtleneck -- the shirt with a built-in mask!
That will offer a chance for healing amidst the fiscal storm of revenue shortfalls for cities and towns:
"Early education centers and family day care homes in Massachusetts will need an infusion of $690 million over the next five months to successfully reopen and recover from the shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report. As the state this week begins to review child care center safety plans and green light reopenings, the study from the liberal-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center highlights how the situation has worsened for an industry already reliant on tuition that was struggling to meet the needs of families before the pandemic. "There's no going back to normal in the economy without child care being available. I think we're all realizing, as parents and around the commonwealth, that this is vital," said Colin Jones, a senior policy analyst for the center and the author of the report. The call for state government to think about how it can prop up an industry in crisis comes as state tax collections are collapsing and states are looking to the federal government for new financial aid to fill budget holes, and cover new expenses. Some daycare operators have said that they are struggling to obtain the personal protective equipment necessary to reopen, while others worry that they will burn through their cash reserves within a couple of months as they are forced to operate at reduced child capacity to observe social distancing. The report does not recommend where the money should come from, but the center has previously suggested eliminating ineffective tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations or tapping the $3.5 billion "rainy day" fund as ways to avoid cuts to services if the federal government doesn't step up with more money....."
Good luck tapping that funding source, and besides "there are a bunch of options and all are preferable to allowing the child care sector to collapse, but without significant additional funding from the state or federal governments, the early education system in Massachusetts will be unable to reopen successfully and remain financially viable over the coming months as parents return to work, maybe forcing them to raise tuition, making early education something only wealthy parents can afford, exacerbating the impact of COVID-19 on low-income and people of color who live in poorer neighborhoods who have been disproportionately affected by the virus."
Unfortunately, they went on orange alert the very next day:
"Some criticize newly released Mass. school safety guidelines" by Meghan E. Irons and James Vaznis Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
They ‘do not feel safe.’
Governor Charlie Baker made it clear on Thursday that everyone needs to do what they can to get students safely back into classrooms this fall, but the guidelines he released left parents, teachers, and school officials eager for more details and anxious about what the coming months will hold.
“It just feels like restaurants have stricter guidelines than what you’re sending kids back to school” with, said Joellen Persad, a ninth-grade physics teacher at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, who criticized the plan for not setting a cap on the number of students in classrooms and not mandating COVID-19 testing. “This does not feel safe. And when it does not feel safe, the brain is not in a state to learn.”
The long list of guidelines, first reported by the Globe Wednesday, attempt to balance a desire to resume in-person education with the continued need to keep students and staff safe from the coronavirus pandemic. They include a requirement that adults and most students wear masks and a recommendation that they eat breakfast and lunch in their classrooms. The new rules don’t require daily temperature checks, and they leave significant challenges for local officials.
One of the more eyebrow-raising aspects of the guidelines allows schools to provide as little as 3 feet of social distancing — despite the mantra of public health officials who have emphasized 6 feet of social distancing in public for months, and with so much unknown about the course of the coronavirus in the coming months, the guidelines also charge superintendents with developing three different plans for learning this fall that will need to be vetted by the state education department: a full-scale return to school, a mix of in-person and remote instruction, and a continuation of only remote learning.
The guidelines do not provide a clear recommendation on whether the state should go back to in-person classes when school resumes in August and September, although state officials stress the goal is to have as many students attend as possible. Districts have not educated students in classrooms since mid-March.
“I’m not sure the general public appreciates how complicated this is,” Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said. “The challenge is enormous.”
Many superintendents, he said, are intrigued by allowing 3 feet of social distancing, but have questions about the research behind that measure and whether it will pass muster with teachers, students, and families.
Several teachers, parents, and elected officials around the region blasted the idea.
With Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone in the lead.
The state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed the guidelines during the press conference.
“While for most children, COVID-19 has not had the devastating and life-threatening physical health effects that have occurred in adults, the negative impact on their education, mental health, and social development has been substantial,” said Dr. Lloyd Fisher, the incoming president of the state chapter.
Dr. Sandra Nelson, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said at the press conference that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation of 6 feet of distance is not always feasible in a school setting. But other measures, such as face coverings, help to keep students and staff safe in those situations.
She said many other countries — and also the World Health Organization — have endorsed a distance of 3 feet as the minimum distance for separation.
“Several modeling studies have been done which have looked at 3 feet of distance versus 6, and in settings of where the transmission risk is low, such as what we would expect in a school classroom, the incremental difference in transmission risk between 6 feet and 3 feet is not very high,” she said.
Several local school officials and statewide organizations, such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, faulted the guidelines for failing to adequately address the challenges of urban schools and other districts that mostly serve students from disadvantaged backgrounds and are already struggling with finances and aging buildings.
Concerns over potential racial disparities in the guidelines went beyond social-distancing capabilities.....
That's when you pull 'em out of public $chool.
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Of course, "recognizing that implementing the guidelines will require more money, the Baker administration said Thursday it would allocate approximately $200 million from the Commonwealth’s federal Coronavirus Relief Fund for costs related to reopening public schools. Schools are eligible to receive up to $225 per student for eligible costs incurred due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, such as training for school staff, supplemental social and academic services, reconfiguration of school spaces, leasing of temporary facilities, and acquisition of health and hygiene supplies, according to officials. Other potential funding sources to support school reopening include $502 million from the Coronavirus Relief Fund that had previously been allocated by Baker to cities and towns, as well as $194 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund grants, the administration said."
"Baker takes heat for not pushing to require Holyoke Soldiers’ Home superintendent be licensed" by Matt Stout and Hanna Krueger Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
In their gut-wrenching report on the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, investigators pointed to a clear gap in the facility’s management: Its superintendent was not licensed to run a nursing home, nor was he required to be, but in detailing several proposals Thursday to overhaul supervision of the facility, Governor Charlie Baker did not recommend rewriting state law to change that standard. Instead, he promised to make licensing a preference — but not a requirement — for the next leader of the home, where investigators say “utterly baffling” medical decisions contributed to a coronavirus outbreak that has killed at least 76 veteran residents.
The decision surprised some union leaders and appeared to cut against a key recommendation of the report Baker himself commissioned.
In an e-mail late Thursday, a Baker administration spokeswoman said that requiring the superintendent to have a license would “severely shrink the applicant pool,” and exclude what his administration called appropriate leaders, pointing to Val Liptak, the home’s current acting administrator, as an example.....
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Related: Warren, Markey, and Pressley call for independent investigation of coronavirus deaths at Chelsea Soldiers’ Home
After the fact, and too late.
Time to play taps for Baker before putting him out of his misery:
"Pharmacy that was state’s largest recipient of opioids to pay $11 million in settlement" by Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Staff, June 25, 2020
A mail-order pharmacy in Andover, the largest recipient of opioid pills in Massachusetts between 2006 and 2012, will be ordered to pay the state $11 million to settle allegations that it improperly dispensed medication, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Thursday.
Attorneys with Healey’s office accused The Injured Workers Pharmacy, which serves workers compensation patients, of shipping thousands of opioid pills across the country without proper safeguards.
“IWP did not stop dispensing their prescriptions until long after their suspicious prescribing behaviors were or should have been apparent to the pharmacy staff filling them and sales staff visiting their offices,” attorneys for Healey’s office wrote in a complaint.
A spokeswoman for the pharmacy said new leadership came in 2017 and significantly changed how the company operated, including eliminating a program the attorney general’s office later targeted in its investigation.
“Since 2017, when new leadership took responsibility for many senior roles in the organization, IWP undertook a comprehensive review and update of many of its training, policies, controls, compliance, and oversight programs,” said Diana Pisciotta, a spokeswoman for the pharmacy. “In hindsight we recognize that the model was imperfect and suspended it completely long before the Attorney General launched her review. We regret the program.”
Now, Pisciotta said, C-2 prescriptions like opioids make up about 15 percent of the company’s business.
Healey said the pharmacy “put dispensing speed and volume over patient and public safety.”
“They dispensed thousands of prescriptions for dangerous drugs, including opioids like fentanyl, with a shocking lack of regard for whether those prescriptions were legitimate,” Healey said in a statement.....
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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Of course, that is the same industry working at warp speed to get you a COVID-19 vaccination.
Time to go outside and listen to the birds:
"Mass Audubon is bracing for a major revenue decline this year by trimming its full-time staff by 13 percent, or 34 positions, through layoffs this week. Additionally, 27 part-timers lost their jobs, and other staffers face extended furloughs and work-hour reductions, a Mass Audubon spokesman said. The Lincoln-based nonprofit anticipates that revenue will be $25.5 million for the year, a 17-percent reduction from the $30.7 million it had previously budgeted, as the COVID-19 pandemic wipes a variety of programs from the calendar. The organization is also restructuring how its sanctuaries are managed, by moving that management into regional hubs. “These cuts have nothing to do with the quality and capabilities of these employees,” Mass Audubon president David O’Neill said. “While we strongly believe that this is the best course of action for the longevity of the organization, it is heartbreaking nonetheless.”
It's a sign of the seasons is all.
