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 Life Care terminated one of the nurses, Colleen Lelievre, last week
after managers at the Littleton, Massachusetts, home accused her of
making clerical errors involving narcotics for residents. She said
she had not been told of any issues until June 12, two days after
publication of the Reuters report. Another nurse, Lisa Harmon, said
a manager barred her from the building the same day, without
explaining why.
“I don’t know how they think that they’re just blatantly doing this
and getting away with it,” said Harmon, a supervisor.
The Reuters report included interviews with Lelievre and Harmon
describing an overwhelmed and overworked staff. In one instance, so
many workers had quit or called in sick that managers assigned a
teenage nursing-assistant trainee to a shift caring for nearly 30
dementia patients, Harmon and a former worker said. Eighty- to
ninety-hour weeks became the norm, the two nurses said. In a
dementia unit, workers were unable to keep residents from wandering
into hallways and other patients’ rooms, potentially spreading
infection.
The two nurses also said management left staff in the dark about the
outbreak and didn’t provide staff testing until mid-May. Thirty-four
workers had tested positive by that month’s end, federal data shows.
Twenty-five residents and one nurse died of COVID-19. (To read the
Special Report, click https://reut.rs/3dmYSQT )
Amy Lamontagne, the facility’s executive director, denied that she
fired Lelievre for talking to Reuters. Lamontagne said Harmon has
not been terminated but that administrators wanted to meet with her
to discuss concerns she raised in the article. Harmon said she
hasn’t been paid since being barred from the facility.
Lamontagne said she terminated Lelievre for errors in “the
administration and documentation of narcotics.” Lamontagne declined
to detail that lapse and would not address why she hadn’t raised the
problem with Lelievre until after the Reuters article ran. She said
the facility started investigating Lelievre two days before the
article ran.
“The timing of it is poor,” Lamontagne said.
A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Attorney General, told by
Reuters of Life Care’s actions against the nurses, said “we take
allegations of workplace retaliation very seriously.”
Spokeswoman Chloe Gotsis added that the attorney general is already
scrutinizing the facility’s management of the crisis: “We have an
active and ongoing investigation into the Life Care Center of
Nashoba Valley’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.”
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U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, who represents the Littleton area, said the nursing home
put its own interests above patient and staff safety.
Life Care also presided over one of the first and deadliest U.S. outbreaks of
the coronavirus at its nursing home in Kirkland, Washington - with 45 deaths
linked to the facility, according to local public health authorities. (For a
story on the Kirkland outbreak, click https://reut.rs/2AOqq4t)
In its investigation, Reuters interviewed several other workers and former
workers at the home, who also detailed mismanagement, staff shortages and lapses
in care. But Lelievre and Harmon were two of three current employees who agreed
to have their names published, and both nurses were quoted more extensively than
the third worker.
The facility never restricted Lelievre’s access to drugs before she stopped
working, Lelievre said. At the time of the alleged paperwork errors, Lelievre
said, she had been working 16-hour days during the outbreak and in one case
worked 24 hours because no one else could fill shifts.
Harmon, the nurse supervisor, said if paperwork mistakes during the outbreak are
grounds for termination, then “every nurse in that building should be fired.”
Harmon herself contracted COVID-19 during the outbreak and used 10 days of
accrued sick time because the company offered no additional paid days to workers
who contracted the disease.
Lamontagne said Harmon never addressed staffing issues with management before
speaking to Reuters, “even though that’s her supervisory role to bring it up
through a chain of command.”
Harmon said she raised concerns about staffing shortages many times with
Lamontagne and other administrators, often telling them the home had no nursing
assistants on certain shifts.
“The whole time, I have been begging for help,” Harmon said. “How much more do
you need to know that the staffing is horrible?”
(Reporting by Chris Kirkham; Editing by Brian Thevenot)
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