RICHMOND, Va. — As the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) continues its efforts to correct financial mismanagement, staff vacancies, and agency inefficiencies, one woman impacted by the department’s struggles to provide nursing home oversight is calling on the governor to ensure the agency is fulfilling regulatory obligations.
Back in January, Heather Tyler submitted a complaint to VDH about her husband’s nursing home Westport Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Henrico County. VDH is responsible for inspecting and investigating nursing homes to ensure facilities meet state and federal health, care, and safety standards.
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In her complaint, Tyler alleged that her husband’s room was filthy, that he was left to sit in his urine for hours, that he suffered an unexplained injury to his hand, and that he had unexplained marks on his body.
“He is a veteran and gave up 20 and a half years of his life to serve and protect. Why isn't somebody serving and protecting him now?” Tyler said. “He doesn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves it.”
But Tyler’s complaint sat for several months with no action from VDH.
It’s the same situation that Steve Lambert experienced when he submitted a complaint about the same facility.
“I found it very disheartening that the Department of Health had not responded,” Lambert said.
When CBS 6 began asking questions and airing stories about Tyler’s and Lambert’s concerns, both said they finally received word from VDH that it had initiated investigations into their complaints.
“It's really pitiful all the times that I've written, all the times Mr. Lambert has written, nothing was being done, but as soon as it was on TV, suddenly the wheels are turning,” Tyler said. “It took them nine months to walk in that door, and I thought this was a pretty serious complaint. And as we know, there's others who are still waiting for their responses.”
Federal data as of November 2024 showed 68% of Virginia’s nursing homes were overdue for inspection — one of the worst performance metrics in the country and behind almost every other state.
A 2023 federal performance review of VDH also found that the agency failed to meet standards for timely investigations of the most serious complaints.
And a new report from the state legislature’s investigative arm detailing significant inefficiencies, financial mismanagement, poor hiring practices, and staff vacancies within VDH revealed the agency is “unable” to complete required inspections and complaint investigations.
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In the VDH office that handles regulatory oversight, more than 70% of employees say they lack the staff to manage the workload.
Tyler believes the governor should disclose his plan to correct that.
“It’s all over the state, so it's not just Richmond. It's the entire state. Governor Youngkin is governor of the whole state of Virginia. He needs to take care of this. He needs to find out what's going on, and it needs to be taken care of immediately,” Tyler said.
Governor Youngkin told CBS 6 in September that he’d be receiving a full brief on nursing home inspections and would get back with us.
Since then, CBS 6 has repeatedly requested an interview with Governor Youngkin’s administration, but we continue to wait for a confirmation.
On Friday, Youngkin held a media event related to education where his press secretary said he would take questions from reporters. However, Youngkin announced that he was being pulled to something else, so he left without answering questions.
CBS 6 followed up with the governor’s spokesperson following Friday’s event again requesting an interview and for his administration’s specific plan to ensure VDH was fulfilling its nursing home investigation and inspection obligations.
Press Secretary Christian Martinez sent a general statement saying the Youngkin administration inherited “significant, longstanding, and very troubling financial and operational issues within the Virginia Department of Health” but has taken “unprecedented steps” to address the issues, including the hiring of a new chief operating officer.
The statement did not include steps to improve nursing home oversight efforts.
As far as coordinating an interview, Martinez said he had not heard back from VDH Commissioner Karen Shelton or Youngkin’s Secretary of Health Janet Kelly.
On Thursday, CBS 6 also approached VDH Commissioner Karen Shelton following a public meeting about the agency’s issues, but she also declined to answer questions.
In a written statement, Shelton said the problems at VDH were created over multiple years and not by her team. Shelton said the issues would take multiple years to fully fix.
“It doesn't need to be ‘Oh, well, it took us a long time to get here. It's going to take us a long time to correct it.’ No, it doesn't have to. It needs to get on it right now, because these are seniors. They don't have a long time,” Tyler said.
Tyler said she’s been unsatisfied with the responses from government officials and that their proposed timelines for corrections are unacceptable.
“It's not going to go away, and Mr. Lambert and I are not going to go away. We're going to see this through until something is done,” Tyler said. “We're all getting old. We all are going to need help at some point in time, whether it's in home care or hospital care or nursing home care, and if they don't have an efficient system in place, then what just happens to us?”
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