Survey: VA employees decry conditions at Northport

Workers at the VA Medical Center at Northport reported broken medical equipment, hazardous conditions, understaffing, filthy facilities, unresponsive management, and other challenges in an anonymous survey commissioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“Our facility is falling apart,” one commenter wrote. “There are not enough housekeepers to keep it clean, not enough technologists to do the work, not enough equipment or broken equipment to do our job, HVAC units failing . . . Patient care and staff morale is suffering and no one seems to notice!”

The survey’s findings are consistent with complaints that have reverberated among Northport employees since at least 2016, when a four-month suspension of surgeries because of a contaminated ventilation system drew outside attention to a range of infrastructure and personnel problems at Long Island’s only veterans hospital. Last year, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), a physician, said Northport was in need of nearly $300 million in renovations.

“Physical environment is hazardous, unsafe and unhealthy,” one employee wrote. “There are cracks and potholes on walking surfaces. . . . Often no air conditioning in work and patient areas. Floors are dirty and water on tunnel floors is hazardous to walking. . . . Bathroom floors are sticky, littered with toilet paper and stalls are often contaminated with human waste.”

“The infrastructure of this Center is like a terminal patient on a ventilator,” one responder wrote. “Thoroughly neglected for too long with millions of dollars wasted on unscrupulously executed contracts.”

Several commenters claimed that bullying and retaliation are commonplace. One alleged that an administrator had texted sexual imagery to a female employee.

The comments were collected in August as part of the annual All Employee Survey, a VA-wide assessment of employee opinions of their work environment. The survey, whose results were shared internally with Northport employees in January, drew responses from 660 of the medical center’s 1,818 employees. Newsday obtained the survey from an employee.

“Sharing data helps all of us to better understand workforce perceptions of organizational strengths and opportunities for improvement,” read a section of the VA website explaining the reason for doing the survey.

Northport had been led by director Philip C. Moschitta from 2009 until last April. The medical center’s current director, D. Scott Guermonprez, took over in June. Guermonprez declined a request for an interview.

Northport labor relations chief Steven Snyder said the medical center “found no evidence to support” the claim of sexual harassment against the administrator, whom he added “voluntarily transferred to a national program office” that has reduced his presence on the medical campus to three times per week.

Many of the employee comments alleged chronic staff shortages and forced overtime.

“It is impossible to deliver quality care to our Veterans when we do not have sufficient staff to provide the necessary services,” one employee wrote. “We are burning out and frustrating our staff by expecting them to do 3 employees worth of work on every tour,” wrote another.

Snyder said complaints that staff shortages have led to forced overtime are “unfounded,” but declined to provide figures on staff vacancies. Nationwide, the VA had more than 33,000 full-time vacancies, an agency spokesman said in March.

“The Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center does have its challenges however we have built a new and transformative leadership team with the energy, motivation, and desire to rebuild the reputation of the [center],” Snyder wrote in an e-mail.

A VA spokesman said employee evaluations of some aspects of the workplace environment at Northport, including staff-supervisor relationships and workplace civility, were higher than at about 85 percent of the nation’s 170 VA medical centers.

Conditions at Northport have increasingly caught the attention of members of Congress.

During a recent visit, Sen. Chuck Schumer urged Washington to give Northport priority treatment and funnel $15 million from an agencywide VA energy savings fund towards rebuilding its failing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), whose district includes Northport, said he plans to visit the facility Monday to get a closer look at problems there.

“Staff, patients and the veteran community at large are saying enough is enough,” Suozzi said.