Two Department of Veteran’s Affairs health care leaders in Aurora were reassigned amidst an internal investigation into workplace concerns.

VA’s Aurora-headquartered Eastern Colorado Health Care System released a leadership statement Tuesday citing “potential operational oversight issues and questions regarding organizational health and workplace culture.”

The issues have been referred to “appropriate oversight bodies,” according to the statement.

While the issues are being investigated, VA is making temporary leadership adjustments, according to the statement.

Michael Kilmer, the current director for eastern Colorado, and Shilpa A. Rungta, the chief of staff, were removed from the leadership page of the agency’s website.

Michael Moore will take over as interim director and Dr. Matthew Talarczyk as acting chief of staff on Nov. 6, according to the email.

Kilmer has been with the department for over ten years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to working for the department, he worked for the Veterans Health Administration.

Rungta has worked for the department for over a year and served as acting chief of staff for a year in 2019.

“VA is grateful for our oversight partners, whose work improves the care and benefits we deliver to Veterans,” the statement said. “We will continue to make improvements, be transparent, and hold ourselves accountable to delivering world-class care to every Veteran.”

The VA Eastern Colorado Healthcare System services at twelve locations in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, including the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora.

VA Rocky Mountain Network spokesperson Kayla Giuliano told the Denver Gazette Tuesday that the department is unable to comment on the investigation until the internal review process is complete.

“VA Rocky Mountain Network and the VA ECHCS is committed to providing safe, timely, high-quality health care to the Veterans we serve,” Giuliano wrote in an email to the Gazette. “All Veterans will continue to receive the world-class health care they deserve.”

The statement comes several months after National Nurses United held a rally outside of Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, demanding that management address “the epidemic of violence” at the facility, they said in a news release.

They criticized management for chronic short-staffing, failure to create workplace violence action plans and lack of action, according to the release.

“Nurses are being assaulted, kicked, spit at, hit, and threatened on a daily basis,” Ricardo Ortega, a registered nurse and the NNOC/NNU associate director at Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center, said. “We have nurses who are scared to come to work or leaving our facility because of these worsening issues.”

Nurses brought the issues to management, who came after those speaking out rather than addressing the issues, Ortega said in the release.

Their demands of management during the rally included the following:

• Work with nurses and other health care professionals to create and implement effective violence prevention plans that are unit specific and include every unit of the hospital and every shift.

• Staff each unit appropriately with nurses and other health care professionals. Nurses know that short-staffing leads to delays in care and this can lead to agitation, anger, and confusion, which can lead to violence. RNs must have sufficient appropriate staff to meet the needs of every patient.

• Respect the nurses’ role as a patient advocate and stop all efforts to retaliate against nurses who speak out about workplace violence and staffing issues. Nurses have been threatened by management for advocating for a safe working environment.

National Nurses Organizing Committee is an affiliate of National Nurses United, a union and professional association of registered nurses with nearly 225,000 members nationwide.