Today we are going to take a look today at a snapshot of Virginia’s worst nursing homes as rated by the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid services.
Medicare rates 54 of the total of 288 nursing facilities in Virginia as overall one star out of five. By definition of the way that Medicare compiles records and assigns scores, they have been bad for a long time.
Don’t use them. If you have any friend or loved one in one of these places encourage them to re-locate if they can. Either way, visit them often. It helps.
The ratings are established in considerable part by the inspections conducted by the Virginia Department of Health Office of Licensure and Inspection.
Chesapeake Climate Action Network webpage boasting about the defeat of a gas pipeline expansion, a signal seen by location managers all around the U.S.
by Steve Haner
“Virginia’s economic recovery continues to outpace the nation… Our unemployment rate remains well below the national average and has fallen consistently every month for the past fifteen months… I’m proud of our roaring economic growth…”
So claimed Governor Ralph Northam (D) in a September 17 news release.
It came just after Virginia’s economy showed especially anemic results in August employment data, capping a period of poor performance effectively described in a recent Bacon’s Rebellion post by Richmond economist A. Fletcher Mangum. Virginia’s job growth this spring and summer has trailed the vast majority of other states, with the August data placing us at a shameful 47th out of 50. Simply achieving the national average growth rate that month would have meant 75,000 more jobs. (more…)
As a retired teacher and mother of two raising a school-aged grandson, I am concerned about what is being taught in the Virginia’s public schools. Two weeks ago, I spoke at a Mathews County School Board meeting to voice my concerns about Critical Race Theory.
The school Superintendent declared that our county does not teach CRT. However, she told me that Virginia does require faculty professional development in the area of “Culturally Responsive Teaching” and “Equitable Practices,” which it links to teacher licensing and annual evaluations. Culturally Responsive Teaching is derived from Critical Race Theory!
A February teacher-training workshop on Equity and Culturally Responsive Teaching in Virginia Beach was leaked to the internet on rumble.com. Several Black presenters were indoctrinating White teachers about racism. Each one repeatedly told the White teachers that they were racist and that all White people are racist. One woman continually tried to persuade the audience to admit they were racist. “One of the most freeing things that White people can do,” she said, “is say ‘of course I’m racist.’” (more…)
This is the second in a series examining Virginia’s Standards of Learning.
by Matt Hurt
In the 2013-2014 school year school superintendents in Virginia’s Region VII, a region encompassing Southwest Virginia, began to focus on declining student pass rates during their monthly regional meetings. The Virginia Board of Education had recently adopted more rigorous Standards of Learning in Math and Reading and implemented much more difficult Technology Enhanced Items on those new SOL tests.
School board budgets had been slashed since the Great Recession of 2008. Many central office positions had been merged through reduction in staff, and those who were left had to attend to the administrative requirements of state and federal mandates. Therefore, the superintendents decided to pool their resources and their talents by creating a consortium, the Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP).
The mission of the CIP was simple: to improve student outcomes as measured primarily by Virginia’s Standards of Learning tests. Initially, data was analyzed to determine which division was the most successful on each SOL test. The most successful teachers of the most at-risk students in that division (as determined by SOL results) were recruited, and they spent the 2014-2015 school year sharing their pacing guides, instructional materials, and assessments, all of which were posted online for others to use. During the first year of implementation (2015-2016), the divisions that used the common pacing guides and common assessments realized greater gains in reading, writing, math, science, and history SOL tests than any other region in the state. (more…)
Most General Assembly incumbents are resting easier. The Democrat and Republican map drawers took their guidance from the Virginia Redistricting Commission seriously and drew district lines putting most incumbents in districts with no other incumbents.
As discussed in an earlier post, the Commission members interpreted Virginia Code language as requiring it to protect incumbents as much as possible. That language prohibits the production of plans that, on the whole, “unduly favor or disfavor” a political party.
The extent to which the lines were drawn to protect incumbents is not obvious on the maps that have been made public. However, the map drawers, while presenting their recommendations on Saturday to the Commission, were able to turn on an overlay in their software that showed the precise location of each incumbent’s residence. A large number of those little dots were very close to district lines or nestled in an area that suddenly bulged from one district into an adjacent district. (more…)
Unidentified member of the Hampton Roads Black Caucus announces group’s support for Youngkin. First hint to Youngkin campaign: when someone announces their support, include their name! Second hint: Give us more than 20 seconds. Let them explain why they endorse you!
by James A. Bacon
Last week Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin received the endorsement of the Hampton Roads Black Caucus (HRBC). It was the first time that the civil rights organization, which had endorsed Democrat Terry McAuliffe eight years ago, has backed a Republican for governor since it was founded in 2012, according to the Youngkin campaign.
The poll generated no local media interest other than a predictable story from Fox News, as well as a brief story on WTOP-TV.
Equally predictably, the McAuliffe campaign downplayed the significance. “I love it when the Youngkin team tweets HUGE NEWS about a Republican group endorsing their Republican candidate,” scoffed McAuliffe campaign spokeswoman Christina Freundlich. (more…)
2020 SCC staff projection of monthly residential bill increases by 2030 for Dominion Energy Virginia customers, mainly tied to a rapid retreat from fossil fuels.
by Steve Haner
When a State Corporation Commission staff analysis warned last year of $808 annual increases in Dominion Energy Virginia residential bills by 2030, that 58% increase was based on the existing deadlines set for Dominion’s conversion away from using fossil fuels.
Change the deadlines, change the cost. Shorten the deadlines by half, as Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe is promising to do, and 2030 electricity costs will grow even higher. (more…)
The Virginia Redistricting Commission started its meeting on Saturday with the goal of reaching a preliminary agreement on one draft map for the House of Delegates and one draft map for the Senate in anticipation of public hearings scheduled to begin on Monday. Six hours later, the meeting was adjourned with the members at a near impasse. There was no “integrated” map for either house and the members had trouble agreeing on how to proceed to the public hearings.
Continuing the approach they had been using in the past, there was a House map developed by the Republican map drawer and one by the Democratic map drawer, each incorporating changes suggested by the Commission members in earlier meetings. During their review, they made some progress, even tweaking some lines in the Lynchburg area and some involving Pittsylvania, Henry, Patrick, and Floyd counties. The problems arose when they began considering Hampton Roads and the Richmond area. (more…)
The Darden School architecture was an homage to Thomas Jefferson’s academical village. Photo credit: UVA Today
A dustup over classical architecture at the University of Virginia prefigured the controversy over Donald Trump’s architecture executive order.
by Catesby Leigh
When Donald Trump ordered a traditionally oriented reform of federal architectural patronage in his final days as president, its life expectancy was exceedingly short. Sure enough, his successor soon revoked the order and subsequently defenestrated most of the members Trump appointed to a little-known but noteworthy design review board. To understand the affair, it’s worth reviewing what transpired in Charlottesville after the turn of the millennium, when the architecture wars heated up at the University of Virginia. On one side was the university’s architecture faculty, reflecting the arcane sensibilities of fashionable latter-day designers and academics and their fellow travelers in the legacy media. On the other side was common sense.
In 1996, UVA completed a new business school campus designed by Robert A. M. Stern, who emulated Thomas Jefferson’s beloved “academical village”—the original ensemble of Rotunda, pavilions, and connecting colonnades girding a long, terraced greensward known as the Lawn. Jefferson famously modeled his crowning Rotunda on Rome’s Pantheon. Stern’s ensemble, which shares UVA’s traditional palette of red brick with details in white wood and limestone, has been a hit with students. Other new buildings adhered to the architectural tradition that Jefferson inaugurated: a handsome pavilion designed by veteran classicist Allan Greenberg for a public-policy institute and a building by Washington’s Hartman-Cox Architects adjacent to the main university library that houses special collections.
So when it came time, in 2005, for the university’s Board of Visitors to consider alternative architectural approaches for a $105 million arts and sciences complex just south of Jefferson’s Lawn, more than half the faculty of the university’s monolithically modernist architecture school tried to head it off at the pass by denouncing traditionally oriented architectural patronage, in a broadside published in the student newspaper, as a matter of converting the university campus into “a theme park of nostalgia” — a Jeffersonian Disneyland. (more…)
In the first two parts of this series, I wrote about the shortage of state inspectors for nursing homes in the Virginia Department of Health Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC) and the continuing danger it poses to Virginia patients.
The problem, unfortunately, is much wider than just nursing homes. So is the scandal.
That same office inspects every type of medical facility including home care agencies as well as managed care plans. Except it cannot meet the statutory requirements because it does not have sufficient personnel or money. And it have been telling the world about it for years.
Terence Richard McAuliffe was the 72nd governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018. Mark Herring has been Attorney General since 2014.
We will trace below that they can reasonably be called the founding fathers of overdue inspections of medical facilities in Virginia.
VDH has been short of health inspectors since McAuliffe and Herring took office and still is.
Both of them know it. And they know that lack of inspections demonstrably causes unnecessary suffering and death.
The Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership of nonprofits, academic institutions, and federal, state and local governments, is now officially woke. In a new directive, the Executive Council has declared that the program will view Bay restoration through the lens of climate change and social justice.
“We acknowledge the consequences of climate change for the Chesapeake Bay region include the disproportionate impacts on vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in both urban areas and rural areas,” states the directive.
“Therefore, we commit to address the threats of climate change in all aspects of the partnership’s work to restore the Bay and its watershed. Partners will prioritize communities, working lands and habitats most vulnerable to every-increasing risks.”
It’s not clear what this will mean in practice. Is the Chesapeake Bay Program board merely genuflecting toward woke rhetoric, or will this new framework meaningfully alter priorities and the allocation of resources? We’ll have to wait and see. But the directive is a clear example of how environmentalist groups are increasingly viewing environmental issues through the lens of climate change and social justice. (more…)
Seventy percent of those in Virginia are for profit. They are run not by doctors but registered nurses with physicians on call.
Nursing facilities very widely in size in Virginia, from the 300-bed Mulberry Creek Nursing and Rehab center in Martinsville to facilities of less than 30 beds, especially the long-term care units of a few mostly rural hospitals.
They include facilities designated as skilled nursing facilities (SNF), often post-op care and rehabilitation, and others designated as long-term-care nursing facilities (NF). Most nursing homes in Virginia have facilities and certified beds for each.
Insurer mix and staffing costs are keys to profitability.
Many of these businesses are worth what they get paid, but many are not. (more…)
None of us ever knows when we will need a nursing home for ourselves, our parents or our kids. Yes, kids.
While long-term nursing care is mostly for older patients, skilled nursing facilities are needed for patients of all ages, including children, for shorter term post-op treatment and recovery.
The patients in many of Virginia’s nursing homes suffer greatly from a combination of known bad facilities and a lack of government inspections. The health and safety of patients in those facilities are very poorly protected by the state.
In this series of reports I am going to point out some nursing homes (and chains) whose records will anger you. Government data show some have been horrible for a very long time in virtually every region in the state.
Those same records show that Virginia is years behind on important, federally mandated health and safety inspections.
VDH’s Office of Licensure and Certification doesn’t have enough inspectors — not even close. And the government of Virginia — officially based on budget data — not only does not care but is directly and consciously responsible.
When I am done reporting on my research I suspect you will demand more inspectors.
You will also reasonably ask why the worst of them are still in business when the Health Commissioner has the authority to shut them down.
This graph shows how UVIMCO divvies up its $14.5 billion endowment from an investment perspective.
by James A. Bacon
The University of Virginia endowment racked up a breathtaking 49% investment return in the year ending June 30, 2021, bringing the total value of the university’s investments to $14.5 billion, reports the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO) in its 2020-21 annual report.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
On the one hand, powerful investment returns supports initiatives such as the recently announced allocation of $50 million dollars for merit-based scholarships and aid to needy undergraduate students. On the other hand, such spectacular financial performance — almost $5 billion in a single year — makes the university leadership less accountable to tuition-paying students and parents, to the Commonwealth of Virginia which funds millions in state support, and to alumni whose individual donations are paltry by comparison.
Come to think of it, I’m even agnostic on whether the $50 million in new scholarship money is a good thing or not. (more…)
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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