All the details in our Health Safety stories come from publicly available Final Orders, Consent Orders, Orders of Suspension and other documents from the Virginia Department of Health and other government agencies. For more information, see the Editor’s note below the story.
The last time that April Vest visited her 66-year-old mother at Petersburg Healthcare Center in January 2024, she couldn’t help but notice how much weight she’d lost.
“She was Italian, she liked to eat,” said Vest. She had been over 200 pounds when she was first checked into the facility by her husband in 2019. Now, she had shriveled down to skin and bones.
Her mother had been miserable for the majority of her stay, Vest told The Progress-Index, but without power of attorney Vest had no way to get her out.
In an emailed complaint about the nursing home to the Virginia Department of Health, Vest outlined how dirty the facility was and how she would find her mother lying in bed, often in soiled clothing and overmedicated. The first time she got her mom up out of bed to walk her around the facility in an attempt to lift her spirits, Vest wrote in the complaint, a copy of which she forwarded to The Progress-Index, the nurses were shocked that she could walk.