By John O Connor •
Updated on April 30, 2021 at 10:31 am
NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Consistent statewide procedures and ongoing drills that target infection response and other emergencies will be routine at Illinois veterans’ homes after COVID-19 caught the LaSalle Veterans’ Home unprepared and claimed 36 lives last fall, the state’s newly appointed director said.
Terry Prince, a 31-year Navy veteran and former senior adviser to the U.S. Surgeon General, has issued a six-point plan for improving readiness at the state’s veterans’ homes in Anna, Manteno, Quincy and LaSalle. The plan follows a blistering investigative report that laid out a string of miscommunications, lax policy and missed opportunities when the pandemic hit the home in LaSalle, 94 miles (151 kilometers) west of Chicago.
Terry Prince, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s designee as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, discusses changes in administration, communication, policies and infection control that he and others at the agency are implementing in response to a COVID-19 outbreak last fall at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home. (AP Photo/John O’Connor)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Consistent statewide procedures and ongoing drills that target infection response and other emergencies will be routine at Illinois veterans’ homes after COVID-19 caught the LaSalle Veterans’ Home unprepared and claimed 36 lives last fall, the state’s newly appointed director said.
Terry Prince, a 31-year Navy veteran and former senior adviser to the U.S. Surgeon General, has issued a six-point plan for improving readiness at the state’s veterans’ homes in Anna, Manteno, Quincy and LaSalle. The plan follows a blistering investigative report that laid out a string of miscommunications, lax policy and missed
AP Photos
An inspector general’s report on the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs LaSalle Veterans’ Home is a maddening story of incompetence and chaos at every level.
The IG report, released Friday, tells the story of an allegedly AWOL agency director; an in-over-his-head chief of staff; a crucial failure to fill an important upper management position; an unconscionably delayed IDVA management response at all levels to a clearly and rapidly deteriorating situation both in the surrounding communities outside the home and when the virus inevitably spread inside the facility; an unprepared and woefully uninformed management on multiple issues, including basics about personal protection equipment; an abject failure to properly train and equip staff; multiple failures to ask for outside help and accept it when offered; and staff infighting and managerial timidity.
Pat Nabong; Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file
Just hours after the release of a scathing report on the state’s handling of a COVID-19 outbreak at an Illinois veterans’ home, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Friday he wouldn’t have hired the former director of veterans’ affairs had he known she would “abdicate” her responsibilities.
That was essentially the description of former veterans’ affairs chief Linda Chapa LaVia’s handling of the coronavirus crisis in the report from the inspector general of the Illinois Department of Human Services at the LaSalle Veterans Home, where 36 veterans have died of COVID-19.
Several witnesses told the inspector general that LaVia was “not a hands-on or engaged day-to-day Director,” leaving the management of the agency and the veterans homes themselves to her chief of staff.
Terry Prince, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s designee as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, discusses changes in administration, communication, policies and infection control that he and others at the agency are implementing in response to a COVID-19 outbreak last fall at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home. (AP Photo/John O’Connor)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Consistent statewide procedures and ongoing drills that target infection response and other emergencies will be routine at Illinois veterans’ homes after COVID-19 caught the LaSalle Veterans’ Home unprepared and claimed 36 lives last fall, the state’s newly appointed director said.
Terry Prince, a 31-year Navy veteran and former senior adviser to the U.S. Surgeon General, has issued a six-point plan for improving readiness at the state’s veterans’ homes in Anna, Manteno, Quincy and LaSalle. The plan follows a blistering investigative report that laid out a string of miscommunications, lax policy and missed