This week, the office of Diana Dizoglio issued two audits of state-run facilities that house Massachusetts veterans.
“These are people who have put their lives on the line for our communities and our families, and they deserve the utmost respect and dignity when they are especially entering into facilities that are state run, where they need assistance with healthcare related needs," said the auditor. "And we looked at both Holyoke and Chelsea, with respect to the soldiers’ homes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and worked to identify areas for improvement with respect to safety challenges, especially.”
Dizoglio says her office found issues with violations of state regulations at both facilities, including failure to post emergency operation plans, failing to conduct emergency drills for all shifts, failure to meet nursing needs of veterans, and other issues regarding oversight.
“We did call on both Holyoke and Chelsea to implement our recommendations and to update their emergency operating plan and conduct their drills and train their staff," she said. "Furthermore, we did find that Holyoke doesn't use an electronic health record system for veterans as is required of other similarly situated health care facilities. And we know in today's day and age that having an electronic health record system can help medical care providers to be able to get access to documents that they might need to streamline services for their patients- And our veterans at Holyoke certainly could benefit from this streamlined system.”
The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home was the site of one of Massachusetts’ most grim episodes of the 2020 COVID outbreak. A surge in cases coupled with horrific mismanagement led to the deaths of almost 80 residents, leading to a investigation into the home’s leadership and a major scandal for the administration of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
The new audit covers July 2020 to June 2023, which goes through the earliest months of Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s administration. And now, Dizoglio, a Democrat who took office in 2023, says Healey has stonewalled access to the notes and records of a key report pertaining to the Holyoke investigation – a report Baker’s administration had also limited access to.
The report is by attorney Mark W. Pearlstein, whom the Baker administration brought in to offer an independent investigation into the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. Its findings were damning, calling the facility’s leadership unqualified and responsible for serious errors that contributed to the death toll. As opposed to later reporting and investigations, it fell short of holding Baker responsible. Findings by the Boston Globe raised questions about the report’s independence, noting that it explicitly details an attorney-client relationship between the office of the Governor and Pearlstein’s law firm.
“We sought to look at the notes regarding the Pearlstein report and other documentation that should be actually made available for review to look at the integrity of that investigation, but those documents were improperly withheld from our office where the administration wrongfully cited attorney-client privilege,” the auditor told WAMC.
Dizoglio says Healey’s administration is effectively continuing her Republican predecessor’s policy concerning the report.
“Essentially, what they're saying is that because Pearlstein was an attorney, and because Gov. Baker claimed attorney-client privilege and refused to release these records during his tenure, that they are going to claim the same exemption now," she explained. "The exemption of attorney-client privilege, for folks to understand, that's the only exemption, essentially, that auditors cannot review. We cannot review attorney-client privileged information.”
Dizoglio says the claim is legally impossible.
“It's either an independent investigation, or Pearlstein was acting as an attorney for the Governor and not conducting an independent investigation," she said. "But again, regardless of what code you want to claim and legalese you want to speak, you know that is the reality of what's happening here, and those records need to be released, because Pearlstein himself said that he was not providing legal counsel to the governor, which throws water on the argument that there's some sort of attorney client privilege that can be claimed.”
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Healey – then the attorney general of Massachusetts who unsuccessfully pursued criminal charges against administrators of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home – described the deaths as tragic, and said she had not yet looked at the auditor’s report.
“I have been a strong supporter of efforts to make sure that we've transformed our veterans’ homes here in Massachusetts, and I believe that we have," said Healey. "And today, both in Holyoke and in Chelsea, we have world class facilities staffed up, our veterans are appropriately cared for and supported, and we're going to continue to continue to do everything that we can to support our veterans in Massachusetts.”
Bennett Walsh, the facility’s former superintendent, with little experience in health care and whom the Boston Globe Spotlight investigative team found to be a political appointment by Baker, initially had criminal charges against him dismissed before eventually receiving three months’ probation for his role in the almost 80 veterans’ deaths. Baker’s own inspector general found that the Governor’s administration had failed to follow state law in Walsh’s appointment.
In a statement, a spokesperson from the Executive Office of Veterans Services noted to WAMC that the period the report covers largely predates the Healey administration and that “each audit finding had already been addressed prior to the report’s publication.” The spokesperson cited Healey’s move to create the Executive Office of Veterans Services and appoint the commonwealth’s first Veterans Services secretary, adding that a new Holyoke Soldiers’ Home is being built.
Dizoglio says her office intends to pursue legal action against the Healey administration to gain access to the Pearlstein report records.
