Two of the federal Department of Veteran Affairs’ top health care leaders in Colorado have been reassigned following concerns over operational oversight, organizational health and workplace culture.
In an all-staff email to the VA’s Aurora-headquartered Eastern Colorado Health Care System, the regional director, Sunaina Kumar-Giebel, said “recent developments” on these matters have been referred to the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of the Medical Inspector, which investigates health care issues raised by veterans.
She did not specify the exact issues that led to the leadership changes.
“Concurrently, VA is making temporary leadership adjustments to facilitate this review and expedite the necessary changes to meet our obligations to the veterans we serve,” Kumar-Giebel wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Denver Post.
Effective Nov. 6, Michael Moore will take over as interim director, while Dr. Matthew Talarczyk will serve as acting chief of staff until an interim candidate is identified, according to the email.
The VA’s current director for eastern Colorado, Michael Kilmer, is no longer listed on the agency’s website. The chief of staff, Shilpa A. Rungta, also has been removed from the leadership page. Both appeared on an archived version of the site as recently as June.
Spokesperson Kayla Giuliano told The Post in an email Monday that both remain VA employees and have the potential to resume their posts. Kilmer will take on a temporary assignment with the Boise VA Medical Center in Idaho, she said, while Rungta will temporarily serve as a physician adviser.
Rungta, reached by phone Monday, said she couldn’t comment on the changes. Kilmer could not be reached.
Giuliano would not elaborate on the workplace concerns mentioned in the all-staff email, only saying veteran care will not be impacted by the leadership transition.
The eastern Colorado system includes the main Aurora campus in addition to 11 outpatient facilities in the region throughout the Eastern Plains and San Luis Valley. It serves nearly 100,000 veterans and has a budget of nearly $1 billion. Leadership oversees around 4,000 full-time employees, including 300 physicians and 776 registered nurses.
Kilmer had served as the agency’s director since September 2019. He previously spent two-and-a-half years as director and chief executive officer of the VA Grand Junction health care system.
Rungta had been chief medical officer and chief of staff with the eastern Colorado VA since July 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before that, she served in a similar position for a VA system in Bedford, Massachusetts.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat representing Aurora and a veteran himself, said in a statement that he’s been briefed on the internal review and is monitoring the situation closely.
In July, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing nurses, rallied outside Aurora’s Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center to demand management address the “epidemic of violence” at the facility.
“Nurses are being assaulted, kicked, spit at, hit and threatened on a daily basis,” said Ricardo Ortega, a registered nurse who works at the facility, in a news release. “We have nurses who are scared to come to work or leaving our facility because of these worsening issues. We have brought up these issues to management but instead of addressing them, they are coming after those of us who are speaking out to demand a safe workplace.”
Another nurse, Jaci Graul, said she had a patient threaten to shoot her recently — just one example of the “daily onslaught” nurses face.
“We demand that VA management take these threats seriously,” she said in the news release.
A former employee at the Aurora facility in August settled a complaint with the VA over hostile work environment concerns, Denver7 reported. The whistleblower, Garland Dotson, told the news station that a VA section chief told him he looked like a monkey.
The Aurora VA hospital opened in July 2018, promising an “unprecedented quality of health care.” The facility, though, exceeded its initial budget by $1 billion and ended up costing more than $2 billion — making it one of the costliest health care facilities in the world.
The spiraling costs featured failed sewers, broiling elevators, downspouts spewing hazardous liquid and other malfunctions.
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