Va. health facilities ‘colluded’ to warn of COVID inspections
The sender wrote “these are the questions verbatim” before listing them, as well as notifying that the inspectors would ask for copies of procedures and watch video footage of staff to ensure mask usage, according to a photo of the email attached to the report.
Nearly a dozen state-run health facilities got tipped off to what were supposed to be unannounced COVID-19 protocol inspections ahead of time, according to an Office of the State Inspector General report released Thursday.
An unidentified employee with the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services was the culprit and ended up invalidating the results.
“Collusion among individual facility directors caused the COVID-19 data obtained by OSIG to be unreliable,” Virginia inspector general Michael Westfall wrote in the report. “Facility directors tampered with the process by sharing OSIG’s inspection topics and specific questions asked on-site. These acts obstructed OSIG’s efforts to gather and analyze data intended to help ensure the safety of patients and staff at the facilities.”
The inspector general’s office conducts annual inspections of each facility run by the DBHDS. Last year, they focused on policies related to the pandemic.
Between Sept. 10 and Oct. 1, inspectors visited all 12 facilities: eight for adult behavioral health, one training center, a pediatric psychiatric facility, a medical center and a center for behavioral rehabilitation.
But sometime after the first site visit — at Southeastern Virginia Training Center in Chesapeake — someone within the behavioral health department sent an email to other facilities that contained detailed questions asked by the inspector general’s office.
The sender wrote “these are the questions verbatim” before listing them, as well as notifying that the inspectors would ask for copies of procedures and watch video footage of staff to ensure mask usage, according to a photo of the email attached to the report.
“From OIG Visit at ESH Today,” the email reads at the top, referring to Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. It notes that inspectors were expected to visit Piedmont Geriatric Hospital the following week.
In a lengthy l et t er responding to the report, DBHDS Commissioner Alison Land disputes the inspector general’s take.
“The characterization of this incident as ‘collusion’ amongst the facility directors to ‘tamper’ with the process is unequivocally false and needlessly incendiary,” she wrote.
The mistake came from a “well-meaning employee who is new to the agency,” Land said in an email Thursday to the Virginian-Pilot.
When her department’s leadership was made aware of the employee’s actions, they i mmediately addressed the incident with the staffer and outlined future expectations, she said.
Land did not respond to a question about whether the employee faced any ramifications.
She said in the email that inspector general recommendations are not always easy to hear, but in the past, she’d found value in the perspective.
“While the relationship with any oversight agency has natural tension, we have historically valued OSIG’s work and used many of its recommendations to improve quality for our facility system,” she said. “However, there was little value found in this report.”
As a result of the shadow cast over the results, OSIG was only able to use its data from the Chesapeake center, which is a home for disabled people in the Greenbrier area.
There had been an outbreak there soon after the pandemic arrived in Virginia last spring. Five people with intellectual disabilities and 11 staff members contracted the virus.
The office concluded that the training center implemented proper safety protocols and successfully adapted them to the unique needs of the patient population.
The inspector general said his office plans to change the way it conducts unannounced inspections, by possibly inspecting all at the same time or using different procedures at each one.