HONOLULU — A state-owned health-care organization in Hawai‘i will take over a veterans care home in Hilo on Hawai‘i Island where 26 residents have died of the coronavirus.
The arrangement announced on Friday will see Hawai‘i Health Systems Corporation take over as the operators of Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home. The previous operator, Utah-based Avalon Health Care, will relinquish all control over the facility.
The HHSC is the same entity that manages the Kaua‘i Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waimea and Samuel Mahelona Medical Center in Kapa‘a.
Avalon experienced additional outbreaks in June and August at its Hale Nani Rehabilitation and Nursing Center facility on O‘ahu, where 42 residents and 40 workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Five residents died of the disease.
The veterans home has had a history of falling short on health standards. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave the home a health-inspection rating of one star out of five.
There were 89 residents living at the care home before the outbreak. Since then, 71 residents have contracted the virus along with 35 employees, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
The veterans home committed multiple health violations between 2018 and 2019, including improperly restraining residents who did not require restraint, failing to adequately supervise residents showering, serving expired food, allowing a resident to fall off a bed and break a hip, and incidents where staffers accidentally caused minor injuries.
According to a 2018 CMMS inspection, several residents were found to have left the home without supervision, including one case where a resident in a wheelchair was found three miles away before any staff member realized the resident was missing.
The veterans home has been fined twice since 2018 for these violations, paying almost $21,000 in 2018 and about $9,000 in 2019.
The state reported 112 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Friday, according to the state Department of Health. There have been 127 deaths from the coronavirus in Hawai‘i since the pandemic began.
The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick.
State announces
4 deaths, 127 new cases
DOH officials reported Saturday four new COVID-19 deaths on O‘ahu and 127 new coronavirus infections statewide, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 131 fatalities and 12,018 cases.
No further details were immediately available about the latest deaths on O‘ahu.
The new infection cases in Hawai‘i Saturday included 124 on O‘ahu, two in Hawai‘i County and one in Kaua‘i County.
The state’s official death toll as of Saturday includes 106 on O‘ahu, 15 on Hawai‘i Island, and nine on Maui, while one was a Kaua‘i resident who died on the mainland.
The official statewide death toll is expected to climb significantly since the state DOH has not yet verified the cause of death in most of the reported fatalities at the Hilo veterans home, which has a total of 26 fatalities.
The U.S. death toll this weekend surpassed 204,000. The bleak milestone, by far the highest confirmed death toll from the virus in the world, was reported by Johns Hopkins University.
Other than the promotion of the upcoming Vaccine Sales, a vaccine made at Warp Speed, that is throwing all scientific caution to the wind, why would the media allow this article,from Associated Press, and repeated by our own “home town” newspaper the Garden Island, published with oft repeated 1/2 truths about virus without allowing sense to be made except for these grateful comments by our citizens. Positive tests mean people with antibodies to deactivate the virus, these are the safe people raising the numbers of herd immunity, the key to ridding the wave of virus pandemic.
Not a single mention of old people, patients, with pre-existing chronic degenerative end of life diseases, combined with the toxic prescription drugs they are on, the actual cause of people croaking. Some people never learn, guess that’s why alcohol, tobacco, all drugs, junk food, etc., are so prevalent.