HOLYOKE — On March 30, a new team of medical professionals arrived at the Soldiers’ Home, where 11 veterans had already died amid a coronavirus outbreak at the state-run facility.
What the team found was that the “already small” staff was further diminished by 40 people who were either sick with COVID-19 or had sick family members, according to Lisa Colombo, the facility’s new incident commander. Speaking Thursday at the first meeting of the facility’s board of trustees since the crisis began, Colombo said that staffing shortage led to the consolidation of the building’s 10 units, despite the fact that veterans and staff were still waiting on COVID-19 test results.
“The staff was really challenged to take care of patients across those 10 units,” Colombo said at the meeting, which was conducted over a conference call. “They had before our arrival consolidated units down to seven units, which resulted in the overcrowding of most of those units.”
Colombo, the executive vice chancellor of Commonwealth Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said one unit, in particular, was “very hot,” meaning many residents were positive for the virus. But she said that most of the units had confirmed or presumed positive cases.
As of Friday, 56 residents have died at the Soldiers’ Home amid the outbreak, 47 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19. Val Liptak, the current acting superintendent, said that 65% of the facility’s veterans have now tested positive, in addition to 81 out of the facility’s 348 employees. Another 10 employees have tests pending and 37 have not been tested, she said.
When the state implemented its clinical command structure, it also placed Superintendent Bennett Walsh on paid suspension. The Soldiers’ Home trustees were scheduled to meet in executive session on April 11 to discuss Walsh’s termination. However, a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the trustees from discussing the matter after Walsh’s lawyer filed a complaint in Hampden Superior Court.
A hearing on the matter has been continued until April 30. Walsh’s lawyer is his uncle — former Hampden district attorney William Bennett.
At Thursday’s board meeting, Liptak said that when the clinical command team arrived, their first focus was on separating, testing and “cohorting” residents so that infected veterans could be separated from those without the virus. Residents who had known contact with someone who tested positive were also separated, Liptak said.
“That process continues daily based on testing results,” she said. “Unfortunately we are still seeing new positive cases arrive, and sadly more deaths.”
Liptak said that other priorities have been communicating with families and boosting staffing levels. The team has brought aboard clinical caseworkers to keep families updated, updated staffing ratios needed for current and future work, improved education for staffers on infection control, and arranged for additional cleaning of empty units to enable patients to be moved, she said.
Additional housekeeping workers have also been hired to bolster infection control, Liptak said. The state has also brought aboard an interim operations manager and a deputy superintendent for data monitoring, and 160 members of the National Guard have been on site assisting with staffing needs and testing.
Other improvements mentioned by the clinical team include the closure of common areas such as the canteen, as well as changes to logistics such as the number of trash cans in the building and how food service is handled.
“We are still managing through this crisis and we are not yet in the clear,” Liptak said. “We are confident that we have the right command structure on the ground today to continue to move the home in the right direction.”
Liptak, Colombo and Daniel Tsai, the deputy secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Service, also praised Holyoke Medical Center for stepping up to take 44 veterans who had screened negative for the virus. Of those veterans, 15 have now tested positive, three of whom have died.
When asked what the local community could do to help, Colombo said that those working in the facility deserve support.
“The staff that continue to show up every day despite the fact that they’re literally in the middle of a hot spot in this pandemic,” she said, adding that the state has brought in professionals to provide emotional support for those employees. “You can imagine how difficult this has been for them, considering these are folks who they have developed longtime relationships with.”
After the operational update, the meeting was adjourned by a unanimous vote of the trustees, who did not take the step of approving minutes from the board’s previous, March 10 meeting.
Kevin Jourdain, the chairman of the board of trustees, previously told the Gazette that Walsh gave a presentation on some of the facility’s COVID-19 preparations at that March 10 meeting. The facility’s medical director also gave a presentation at that meeting, according to the meeting agenda.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.