Pentagon probing conditions at veterans home

WASHINGTON – Reports of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home prompted the Pentagon Wednesday to begin investigating conditions at the veterans facility in Washington, D.C.

The Government Accountability Office warned the Pentagon this week that residents of the home “may be at risk” in light of allegations of severe health-care problems. Residents have been admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center with “the most serious type of pressure sores” and, in one case, with maggots in a wound, according to a GAO letter sent to the Defense Department.

Timothy Cox, the chief operating officer for the retirement home, said Wednesday that the accusations are “without merit,” and he blasted the GAO for making “inflammatory allegations” without investigating them.

The reports came from medical personnel who treat residents at the historic veterans home, formerly known as the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home. The facility, run by an independent federal agency under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, is home to more than 1,100 enlisted retirees, many of them veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The Pentagon sent a team of four doctors on an unscheduled visit Wednesday morning to view the conditions and speak to officials and residents. The team was appointed Tuesday in response to the letter sent a day earlier to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates by David Walker, the comptroller general for the General Accounting Office.

The letter reported allegations that inspectors received during its “oversight and monitoring” of the home, mandated by Congress in 2005. According to Walker’s letter, the allegations include a “rising number of resident deaths,” an increase in the rates of admission to Walter Reed, resident rooms befouled with human waste, and veterans suffering from bedsores.

Those who raised questions about the medical care have suffered retaliation from the private company that manages the veterans home, the medical personnel told GAO investigators.

During a tour of the home Wednesday, Cox confirmed that a resident had been found in August with maggots in a leg wound. Cox said the man was “noncompliant and combative,” and did not want his dressing changed.

Cox said the reports of human waste in the rooms may have stemmed from an outbreak in February of highly contagious norovirus.

Cox said the home’s death rate has gone up from about 13 to 15 a month, but he attributed the rise in part to a new hospice program.