Category: Health Care
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Virginia’s Dreadful Nursing Home Choices Part 3 – Nursing Home Costs and Alternatives
by James C. Sherlock Nursing home costs and payments are complex subjects not often explained. Patients need a place for round-the-clock skilled nursing care to continue to heal from surgeries after hospital discharge. For some, their care is too complex to get at home, or their homes are not suitable for such care. They need…
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Virginians’ Dreadful Nursing Home Dilemmas Part Two – Virginia Beach
by James C. Sherlock This article will explore a single geographic area, Virginia Beach, to focus on what nursing home choices mean in practice to the citizenry of Virginia’s largest city. The quality of the nursing home inventory in Virginia Beach is illustrative of that of all of south Hampton Roads and much of…
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Virginians’ Dreadful Nursing Home Dilemmas Part One – Assessing the Information
by James C. Sherlock Disclaimer. The author is a member of the Virginia Nursing Home Oversight and Accountability Advisory Board established under Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order 52. Nothing in this series should be taken to represent the opinions of the Commonwealth or that Board. This series will explore the dreadful and dangerous choices faced by…
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Former UVA Health Leaders Accused of “Hostile Takeover” in Bombshell Federal Lawsuit
A newly filed federal lawsuit accuses former leaders of the University of Virginia Health System of orchestrating a coordinated campaign of corruption, fraud, and retaliation – even comparing the institution’s leadership to a criminal enterprise. It is alleged that as a result of this behavior, multiple patients died. Filed on October 3 in the U.S.…
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The Pediatrician-in-Chief
by Dick Hall-Sizemore At his press conference last week, President Trump railed at length against giving young children multiple vaccinations at once. In his view, doctors were pumping all this stuff into those “beautiful bodies.” At times, he alluded to 80 vaccines, as if children were being given every vaccine available. At other times, he…
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Not Sweet
by James C. Sherlock I have written here for years about Virginia’s worst nursing homes and the inevitable abuse that comes from ritual understaffing as a business model. The activities of the nursing home operating companies are funded by Medicare and Medicaid and overseen by federal and state health authorities. To make short a very…
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Impersonal Medicine, But There Are Bright Spots
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Eye exam Many years ago, I went to Benny Lambert for my regular eye examinations. His optometry office was in a small building in Jackson Ward across the way from downtown Richmond. No one was ever in the small waiting room when I got there. There was one receptionist. Behind the receptionist’s desk, there was…
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Can Virginia Save $2.6 Billion in Medicaid Spending Through One Simple Fix?
Brad Hart is co-owner of Forest Park Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy. He has a few things to say about Medicaid spending in Virginia. Independent pharmacies have a big stake in state Medicaid policies, but the dude is from Fort Worth, Texas! Click here to listen. Hart’s commentary is based on a report by Arlington-based Strategic…
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Another Power Struggle Between Youngkin and General Assembly
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Another dispute between Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the General Assembly, one that has faint echoes of one occurring north of the Potomac, has taken on a larger life with parties turning to the Virginia Supreme Court. Before going into the details, some background would be helpful. The Virginia Constitution provides, “The Governor shall…
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Princess Anne and the Blob
by James C. Sherlock I posted earlier today about the cutoff of Princess Anne Health and Rehabilitation Center (Princess Anne) in Virginia Beach from Medicare and Medicaid participation. Federal and state officials had as evidence very recent smoking guns from a February 2025 complaint inspection and a June 2025 revisit by the VDH Office…
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One Down
by James C. Sherlock For the first time ever, a Virginia nursing home, Princess Anne Health and Rehabilitation Center (Princess Anne) in Virginia Beach, has been evicted from the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Before I get to it, I want to acknowledge and thank those who have been working to improve nursing facilities in…
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A Solution for Effective Nursing Home Oversight
Cutting the Gordian Knot by James C. Sherlock An overarching fact often overlooked is that the for-profit nursing home industry is the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Few for-profit facilities and chains existed before the passage of those programs in 1965. Yet it is for-profit systems that overwhelmingly commit abuses. Government oversight has proven…
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The Colonial Heights Scandal – the Tip of a Very Large Iceberg
The Boys from Lakewood by James C. Sherlock Most of them are quite young. They have a lot in common. They are friends in many cases. Some grew up together. More are related through blood or marriage. Many have worked together. Some are a second generation of their families in the nursing home industry; To…
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Shell Game
by James C. Sherlock We note that the owners of Medical Facilities of America (MFA) have renamed their entire 51-facility chain “Lifeworks Rehab”. They can change it weekly if they wish. There are no rules on that front. We are left to presume it is happenstance that now none of the bad MFA headlines…
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Let’s Run the Medicaid Numbers Before Hitting the Panic Button
by James A. Bacon Aubrey Layne was a great public servant in Richmond before he moved back to Norfolk to take a job as chief administrative officer of Sentara Health. He did a superior job as Secretary of Transportation under Gov. Terry McAuliffe and then as Secretary of Finance under Gov. Ralph Northam. He earned…