A Pennsylvania senator who lives near the state-run Southeastern Veterans’ Center in Chester County has asked for removal of its top managers following the deaths of 47 residents in April, including 27 from COVID-19.
State Sen. Katie J. Muth, a Democrat, said she made the request during a phone conference Wednesday with federal and state officials that included Maj. Gen. Anthony Carrelli, head of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which runs the Southeastern nursing home in East Vincent Township for veterans and their spouses.
“Forty-seven deaths in the month of April and no one is blinking? C’mon!” Muth said Thursday.
She said staffers and family members of residents at Southeastern have been telling her about questionable practices there for more than four weeks.
Another senator who was on the call with Muth, Sen. Pam Iovino, a western Pennsylvania Democrat, also expressed concern Thursday about Southeastern. She said the top managers should be suspended.
The calls for reform come as some family members demand answers of their own.
Ian Horowitz’s father, Army veteran Ed Horowitz, lived at Southeastern and died May 10 of COVID-19, his son said. Managers at Southeastern “did not protect our veterans,” Horowitz said.
Wanda Longenecker of Chester County said her brother-in-law, 83-year-old Air Force veteran Ed Bush, was a Southeastern resident who died recently.
“I would like to find the truth of what was really going on in there,” she said.
Iovino served in the Navy for 23 years and has held federal and county government-level veterans agency positions. She is minority chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee.
“I feel like training attention on this is the right thing to do,” Iovino said of Southeastern.
A Military and Veterans Affairs spokeswoman said she would seek answers to written questions sent to the department by The Morning Call on Thursday morning, but did not provide responses.
Muth said she has been contacted by many staff members and family members with loved ones at Southeastern, and believes residents there may be less safe than those in other nursing homes.
“The management and the supervisors do not give consistent or adequate direction in terms of administering a true mitigation protocol,” said Muth, who also has asked Attorney General Josh Shapiro in writing for an investigation of “possible violations” at Southeastern.
On May 12, Shapiro announced he had opened criminal investigations into several Pennsylvania nursing homes, but did not name them. Asked in writing whether Southeastern is one of them, a spokesman for Shapiro said he could not comment.
Iovino said she, too, believes an investigation is warranted because of the deaths and because of statements from staff and family members.
Nearly 70% of the 4,000-plus deaths in Pennsylvania from COVID-19 have been at nursing homes or personal care homes. But Southeastern is one of only six long-term care facilities run by the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. The facility, the third veterans home built for the state, opened in 1983, and had 287 residents as of July 2019.
In the most recent fiscal year, the expenditure of state funds at Southeastern was $15.2 million, with total spending at $36.6 million. Much of the balance came from the federal government.
Muth said she was given a listing of individual deaths that showed 47 residents died at the facility in April. Twenty-seven of those, she said, were attributed to COVID-19.
That indicated the other 20 deaths were from other causes.
Both Muth and Iovino said they were given data that showed the typical rate of deaths at Southeastern is less than two residents a month.
Muth said she has been going back and forth with state officials about her concerns over Southeastern for more than four weeks.
Time, she said, is important.
“People are dying,” she said.
Horowitz said he set up a group site on social media for family members to share their grief. The site, he said, evolved into a hub for people to share stories about questionable actions by management at Southeastern.
Horowitz said he has contacted the attorney general’s office.
Muth and Iovino were part of a legislative hearing May 6 in which Carrelli heard first-hand of some of the complaints about Southeastern.
Some came from Fran McDermott, whose 91-year-old mother still lives there. Her father, the late Joseph McKeon, was a World War II veteran who served on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri.
Testifying at the hearing, McDermott — who holds power of attorney for her mother — said she learned in mid-April that there were several COVID-19 cases at Southeastern.
She said she contacted a staff member who was unable to answer questions about testing.
A few days later, McDermott said, “You can imagine my surprise on Friday night, April 17, I got an alert on my phone from the Philadelphia Inquirer with the headline, ‘Coronavirus killed at least 10’ at the state-run veterans home in Chester County. It stated … additional body bags are being ordered to the home to keep up with I assume the anticipated deaths from the virus.”
The story published by the Inquirer was the first time McDermott learned of mass deaths at Southeastern.
“I thank God for a free press,” McDermott testified. “That’s all I can say because I don’t know when we would have found any of this information out, had we not read it in The Inquirer.”
Morning Call reporter Ford Turner can be reached at fturner@mcall.com.
