Review prompts closure of VA facility in Walla Walla

YAKIMA – The Department of Veterans Affairs has shut down its 30-bed nursing home in Walla Walla after an outside review raised concerns about the quality of care and an internal audit validated those concerns.

Just 10 nursing beds were occupied.

The Long Term Care Institute was contracted by the VA to review nursing homes around the country. The unannounced inspection at the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial Veterans Affairs Medical Center on July 15 raised immediate concerns about the physical infrastructure of the nursing building, which is about 80 years old. Concerns included sloping floors and patients’ access to doors and stairwells.

The review also raised concerns about administrative control of medication and the competence of nursing staff.

VA officials began notifying patients and their families Wednesday that the center would close. Two patients already had been scheduled to be discharged, and social workers were hoping to place the remaining eight patients in new facilities by today, said DeAnn Dietrich, acting medical center director.

“We had to do the right thing for patients, and if we can’t provide care that is equal to or better than the private sector, we shouldn’t be doing it. So we had to shut it down,” Dietrich said.

Established in 1858 on an 84-acre campus at Fort Walla Walla, the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center serves an estimated 69,000 veterans in southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon and North Idaho.

The medical center has been threatened with closure for several years as part of an overhaul of the VA health care system, but officials from all three states have fought to keep it open.