Yet another incident revolving around a patient’s death in the Veterans Center in Talihina has come to light during a recent investigation of the facilities standards and practices.
Investigators from the Oklahoma State Department of Health probing the choking death of a Sapulpa man found that the veterans center “failed to provide sufficient staff” to protect his safety.
The hospital came under scrutiny when another patient, Owen Ross Peterson, died at the facility if sepsis and was found to have maggots insde a wound at the time of his death.
Leonard Smith, 70, was an advanced dementia patient living in a locked-down, special-needs unit when he choked to death Jan. 31 after being given food, fluids and medication.
After he died, a medical provider found that he had a plastic bag lodged deep in his throat. Four employees of the state-run nursing home for veterans have been reported to their respective licensing boards for possible disciplinary action in the case.
In a just-released report from the state Health Department’s Protective Health Services, investigators said they found no documented history of the resident having swallowing difficulties or of swallowing foreign objects.
The investigation determined that the staff:
• Failed to “ensure a resident was free from neglect” by providing supervision and ensuring a safe environment when an unsupervised Smith picked up a knotted plastic trash bag another resident left on a table and swallowed it.
• Failed to “thoroughly assess, monitor and intervene” following an incident involving two residents.
• Failed to investigate low-level workers’ reports of an incident in November in which Smith passed a portion of an examination glove in a bowel movement.
Smith served as a radar technician in the U.S. Navy for five years during the Vietnam War, earning the Vietnam Service and Vietnam Campaign medals. He had been a resident of the Talihina veterans center, about 150 miles southeast of Tulsa, since January 2014.
State Sen. Frank Simpson, R-Ardmore, who has said Smith’s life was “senselessly lost” said he, too, had received a copy of the Health Department’s investigation.
The Oklahoma State Senate passed SB544 , sponsored by Simpson, last week. he bill calls for the facility to be moved no more than “40 miles from it’s present location, There is a strong lobby to move the facility to Poteau in the future.
