Why Aren’t VA Community Clinics Safer?
On March 17, a distressed veteran named Lawrence Michels walked into the Department of Veterans Affairs community clinic in Jasper, Georgia—a small, quiet town nestled at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Staff escorted him for a mental health consultation with Nic Crews, the clinic’s social work case manager.
During the appointment, Michels drew a handgun, shot Crews, and fled the building. Local police intercepted him outside and exchanged gunfire, killing him.
Crews, 34, was airlifted to a hospital and died the following day, leaving a wife, two young children, and a third on the way.
To friends and colleagues, Crew’s devotion to veterans was unmistakable. His coworker, Joe Mulligan, described him as embodying “a faithful and relentless commitment to serving the mission of providing care to America’s veterans,” and working “with the utmost concern in promoting healing and recovery for our nation’s wounded.” Cody Porter, a close friend since college, said his VA work wasn’t a career but a calling. Porter noted, “He would tell me, ‘My heart just burns with compassion for these guys—for the way that they’ve served, for how much they’ve given up, and just how a lot of these guys are really broken.’”
Like most of the 1,193 VA community clinics, the Jasper, Georgia, facility had no armed VA police—unlike VA medical centers. Nor did it have a weapons detector —an absence, according to Florence Uzuegbunam, an Atlanta VA nurse practitioner and local National Nurses United associate director, that “would have saved two people—the veteran and Nic.”
The VA has a generally strong track record of addressing workplace violence, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines as “any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening behavior that occurs at the work site.” Its Workplace Violence Prevention Program dates to 2012, and OSHA recognizes it as a model of best practices for health care settings. Despite the VA’s well-developed framework, serious gaps remain.
In a new piece for The Washington Monthly, VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Russell Lemle digs into the urgent issue of safety at VA facilities, detailing pioneering advances at the agency while also interrogating acute issues, many of which stem from the current staffing crisis.
Read Lemle’s piece here.