Photo courtesy of the Office of the Inspector General
While the nation struggled to cope with a global shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors, nurses and frontline workers were dangerously ill-equipped to care for stricken patients, particularly in nursing homes across New York City.
A state probe has found that during the public health emergency, $560,000 worth of PPE, purchased by the state Department of Health (DOH) for use by the NYS Veterans Home at St. Albans, was ruined as a result of being stock-piled on tarp-covered, weather exposed pallets in a parking lot outside of the facility due to a lack of storage space and significant deficiencies in both intra- and inter-agency communications.
These, and additional findings were detailed in a report released Nov. 21 by New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang, who outlined her office’s comprehensive investigation into the issues surrounding DOH and St. Albans’ participation in a statewide “Aggregated Buy” of PPE organized by the New York State Office of General Services (OGS) in late 2020 in anticipation of a feared “third wave” in early 2021.
While acknowledging that the events detailed in the report took place against the difficult backdrop of constantly changing scientific predictions about the spread of the virus and significant logistical challenges, the inspector general’s investigation revealed that missed opportunities, insufficiencies in record keeping, staffing shortages and communication breakdowns both within DOH and with other agencies led to a significant waste of state resources.
More specifically, in November 2020, using its rate of PPE consumption from the height of the pandemic as a guide — as was suggested by OGS, but without taking into account on-site storage space ‚ St. Albans ordered over five million units of PPE. While administrators at St. Albans believed this PPE would be delivered monthly starting in…
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