Death investigation continues at veterans center in Talihina

Federal officials banned the Oklahoma Veterans Center in Talihina from admitting new residents in the wake of the choking death of a man with laterstage dementia in the nursing home’s lockeddown special-needs unit.

The ban on new residents, put in place by federal Veterans Affairs investigators, was reportedly lifted Friday morning, about 2½ weeks after Smith’s death.

Officials at the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs revealed that new information, but little else about the ongoing investigation into the Jan. 31 death of 70-yearold Leonard Smith, formerly of Sapulpa, during a meeting Friday of the nine-member commission that oversees the state agency.

It is the second Talihina resident’s death to be investigated in recent months, and a nurse who works in the facility but asked not to be identified has told the Tulsa World that Smith’s death “was not of natural causes, and I think the (state medical examiner’s) office will confirm that.”

The nurse said Smith died shortly after being given something to eat and drink, and during lifesaving attempts to clear his airway he was found to have some kind of plastic bag lodged in his throat that had prevented the food and fluids from passing through.

John Carter, chairman of the governor-appointed Oklahoma Veterans Commission, said during Friday’s public meeting it was his understanding that Smith “had a long history of ingestions of things perhaps that were not edible and this was not passed onto admissions when he was admitted,” seemingly implicating Smith’s relatives or previous health care providers.

But Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs officials told Carter they could not confirm that information because of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which safeguards the privacy of patients’ medical information.

During a brief recess in the meeting, the Tulsa World asked Carter the source of the information he had just shared about Smith and whether commissioners are supposed to be privy to residents’ HIPAA-protected medical information.

“I was probably briefed with private HIPAA information I shouldn’t have been and I would ask that you not divulge what I said,” Carter said.

Carter then said he is awaiting the results of three “parallel” investigations, one by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, another by Oklahoma Department of Human Services and finally, the ODVA’s own internal investigation.