Roosevelt Island Elected Officials Convene CB 8 Coler Task Force To Monitor Nursing Facility Treatment Of Residents, Shield Whistleblowers From Retribution And Increase Health & Hospitals Corp Transparency - Watch Video Of Virtual Coler Town Hall Questions From Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer To Coler CEO Robert Hughes

Roosevelt Island residents have been greatly concerned with reports of inadequate treatment received by residents at NYC Health & Hospitals Corp (H&HC) Coler Skilled Nursing and Rehab Facility (Coler) during the Coronavirus Pandemic as reported in the NY Post

Interesting: After @NYCHealthSystem told @nypost the accusations of mistreatment at Coler were "simply false" @NYCMayor expresses concern. "If something went wrong in the middle of this crisis I want to get to the bottom of it." Says H+H will investigate.https://t.co/5N14o4Wu6U

— Sally Goldenberg (@SallyGold) May 18, 2020

and expressed by Open Doors Poet/Coler resident Jay Molina

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A post shared by Open Doors NYC (@opendoorsnyc) on May 8, 2020 at 2:26pm PDT

On June 25, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer hosted a Virtual Town Hall to discuss issues and answer community questons regarding treatment of Coler residents, or lack thereof, at the Roosevelt Island Skilled Nursing Facility during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Also, attending the Virtual Coler Town Hall were elected officials including Roosevelt Island NY State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright, Coler Chief Executive Officer Robert Hughes, Coler resident Vincent Pierce, Manhattan Community Board  8 Chair Alida Camp and concerned Roosevelt Island residents.

Assembly Member Seawright began the Town Hall reading a June 25 letter sent from elected official to H&HC President Mitch Katz. According to this excerpt of the letter:

... we are constituting a community-based Coler Task Force under the auspices of Community Board 8, chaired by Alida Camp, CB8’s Chair and a professional mediator to be called upon when necessary. The Task Force will be composed of Coler residents and families, local stakeholders and elected officials. The Task Force will identify issues of concern and obtain timely responses from Health + Hospitals senior management, facilitate tours of Coler for members of the committee and elected officials, and ensure healthcare workers or residents who speak out are shielded from any retribution. We ask that senior-level officials from H + H be designated to work with the task force to ensure the highest communication and cooperation. Many of Coler's patients and staff are people of color, and we are particularly concerned about any disparities in care or treatment

We believe that the Task Force will play a valuable role in working with Health + Hospitals to bring clarity to the operations at Coler, especially in COVID testing and in the understanding of protocols. We believe that the Task Force will move us toward our mutual goal of protecting patients, supporting staff, and resolving issues at Coler.

Here's full video of the Coler Town Hall.



The Roosevelt Island volunteer group Friends Of Coler annotated portions of the video but it is informative  to watch the full meeting:

11:09—OPEN DOORS Member Vincent Pierce gives a resident statement

25:35—MBP Gale Brewer presses Coler CEO Robert Hughes about PPE; Hughes maintains Coler has had sufficient PPE and that nurses aides who posted video needed to be re-educated (note: nurses aides now get one N95 mask per week)

48:27 - MPB Gale Brewer asks CEO Robert Hughes about Coler's well-loved staff and COVID cases or deaths of staff members

50:15—CB8 Chairperson Alida Camp advocates for community concerns

51:41 CEP Robert Hughes responds to Alida Camp's questions and Vincent Pierce responds to Robert Hughes's references to "misinformation"

Following the meeting, Manhattan Borough President Brewer said:

Deeply grateful for everyone’s participation and we're looking forward to increased transparency.

According to CB 8 Chair Alida Camp:

The newly created Coler Committee, chaired by CB8, will provide a voice for the Coler residents to express their concerns and raise issues and a collaborative means to address those concerns and issues. Our goal is to ensure the best possible care and highest quality-of-life for the Coler community, and to prevent the problems experienced during the first wave of COVID-19 if we suffer a second or third wave.

CB8 finds it difficult to reconcile the statements of Mr. Hughes with those of the Coler residents and visiting nurses. However, we anticipate better communication between the Committee, the Coler residents and staff, and the Coler administration, as well as greater responsiveness to COVID-19 (if there are additional waves) moving forward.

Roosevelt Island resident Lauen Blankstein reported that during the June 25 Coler Virtual Town Hall:

... I watched a white man in a powerful position, protected by a large government institution deny the lived experience of a disabled black man.

At a virtual town hall organized by elected officials, Vincent Pierce, a Coler resident, spoke straightforwardly about what he witnessed and, importantly, experienced personally during the first chaotic months of the pandemic. Nursing staff including aids had insufficient PPE, COVID-positive residents were put in rooms with non-COVID residents, a higher number of Coler residents died (at Coler and after taken to hospital) as a result of the virus than publicly reported by Health & Hospitals.

Coler CEO Robert Hughes, denied it all in his statements which felt disingenuous and trite. Constituents and attendees were looking for a real, honest exchange. Hughes did not address Pierce’s concerns directly. He just steamrolled over them with canned responses so obviously rehearsed. I understand that prior to the town hall, NYC Health & Hospitals made sure that the questions Hughes was asked were not confrontational and they insisted on a one-hour time limit which made the meeting feel rushed. I submitted a question prior to the town hall that I expected to be addressed.

My question was this: We know for a fact that at least one Coler resident who has quadriplegia and bedsores was left in his bed for four days after his unit went into lockdown despite repeatedly asking to be put into his wheelchair. How do you explain this neglect? How will Coler and NYC Health & Hospitals take steps to ensure that all residents receive proper care that is up to strict standards, even under difficult circumstances like a second or third wave of COVID-19? It’s an important question that begs an explanation and an investigation. It was rejected by H & H and I doubt this obvious case of neglect will ever be investigated. Clearly, no one is protecting this man.

Since the town hall I’ve been thinking about another event that has impacted our community recently – the firing of RIOC President Susan Rosenthal, a white woman, for racially and sexually inappropriate comments. I can’t help but compare Hughes’ and Rosenthal’s fates.

In Rosenthal’s case, a RIOC staffer complained that Rosenthal allegedly said, among other things, that her son-in-law is “black as hell” and her daughter is “white as snow” and that “not all black people look alike”. In addition, she wrote that Rosenthal had an artwork that depicted a slave picking cotton in her office which made some staff uncomfortable. She bought it at a Black History Month exhibition at RIVAA. The Governor fired Rosenthal within days of receiving the complaint. Rosenthal’s comments are examples of a kind of racial insensitivity that is overt and can therefore be easily investigated and corroborated.

The case of Coler and Hughes is much more insidious and malignant. Tragically, it is a perfect example of systemic racism playing out in real time on our island. In this case Hughes and H & H are the system. The system is supposed to protect the residents and staff at Coler but it didn’t.

Fearful voices from the frontlines were ignored, staff felt intimidated, truths about inadequate PPE distribution,



staffing shortages and more were flatly denied. If the system was working for the residents and healthcare workers at Coler probably fewer people would have died and gotten sick. Not to mention my friend wouldn’t have been left in bed for four days straight. I can’t help but wonder that this is the case because the majority of people who live and work at Coler are brown, black, disabled and on Medicaid, and their voices and feelings don’t carry enough weight to matter within an unjust system.

Hughes speaks so confidently that all was in order and operating according to protocol (“within CDC guidelines”) in March and April but according to residents I’ve spoken with, Hughes was not seen on the units during those months gathering facts with his own eyes. In reality, some residents say they have never seen him on the units – ever.

The optics of this are dreadful and warrant contemplation especially in this moment. A white man of authority and his protectors in their Ivory Towers are asserting that his knowledge is correct and the knowledge of the black and brown people who are positioned under him is wrong, misinformed or uneducated as Hughes said in the town hall about the nurses’ aides begging for N95 masks in a social media post, despite the fact that they actually lived the shit-show daily. This is not a case of any one person saying something specific that can be deemed racist. It’s more harmful than that. It’s the kind of life-destroying racism that is woven into the fabric of our institutions.

The system swiftly punished Rosenthal for racially insensitive conduct that offended a staffer. The system shielded Hughes from having to address the harm caused to people of color, poor people and disabled people due to his mismanagement. Complaints and concerns from residents and nurse aids fell on deaf ears until some travelling nurses, white women from out of state, went public with details about mismanagement and appalling conditions at Coler. H & H did an internal investigation and deemed the nurses’ claims unsubstantiated. Hughes is off the hook.

The disgruntled RIOC staffer began her letter to the Governor by referencing the Black Lives Matters protests. She ended her letter stating “if I continue to ignore these experiences there will be no progress.” The Governor heard her and obliged. In Coler’s case, the authorities are unmoved and refuse to take seriously criticism of Hughes’ leadership during the pandemic. That’s where we come in. We mustn’t ignore Vincent Pierce. As a community, we have a responsibility to stand behind him, Coler residents and staff who are trying desperately to make their voices heard. If you haven’t listened to the town hall yet, I urge you to do so. Email Friends of Coler to find out how you can help advocate for a safer, more just Coler as we move forward: friendsofcoler@gmail.com

According to Coler CEO Robert Hughes, 13 Coler residents have died as a result of Covid-19 and 1 suspected for a total of 14.

As reported June 25, according to a H&HC spokesperson:

After careful review and interviews with patients and staff, NYC Health + Hospitals found the traveling nurse's allegations unsubstantiated. We take pride in the facility's top-ranked clinical services and the supportive environment it provides all its residents. Our staff care for residents with respect and compassion, treating them more like family than patients, and providing their loved ones with peace of mind. The facility remains committed to the health and safety of the resident population it serves - not just during the COVID-19 pandemic, but always....

... The investigation was comprehensive of the entire Coler campus -- RIMC and NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler. There ins't a sharable version of the report at this moment.