Veterans center to remain in Talihina

A bill that could eventually move the Talihina Veterans Center to nearby Poteau failed in a House committee this week.

The center provides residential nursing care for military veterans and has come under scrutiny for deaths, alleged mistreatment of patients and a severe nursing shortage.

Senate Bill 544 failed to get enough support to advance from a House committee Tuesday. It would have been the last step before a final vote on the House floor.

The bill’s author said he’d like for the bill to have another shot before next week’s committee deadline, but he said it would be hard to change enough minds to bring it back up for a vote.

“My fear is if another incident happens there and they lose their accreditation from the federal (Veterans Affairs Department), you’ve lost the center,” said state Rep. Tommy Hardin, R-Ardmore.

If adopted, the bill would authorize the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs to move the center, its patients and employees 38 miles down the road to Poteau.

Hardin said that moving to Poteau, a town with a population almost eight times more than Talihina, would help with staff retention.

“You’re in a small town of 1,100 people and you have problems keeping staffing levels up,” he said.

Oklahoma Veterans Affairs Deputy Director Doug Elliott said he wants to see patients leave the center, which was first built in 1921 for tuberculosis treatment.

“We basically want to move somebody out of a 100-year-old sanatorium where elevators are their main form of ingress and egress,” Elliott said. “When those elevators go out, those patients are stranded. I’m quite certain no one would want their loved one to be in that building when those elevators are out.”

State Rep. Brian Renegar, who represents Talihina, has publicly criticized the proposed move. He spoke out in committee not for the residents of the small town or the employees of the center, he said, but for the patients and their families who now live nearby.

“If you start moving those people, you’re moving more than just the veterans. You’re uprooting their families,” he said.