T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Iowa Veterans Home Licensed Nursing Home Administrator Penny Cutler-Bermudez, pictured, has formally announced her plans to retire on Jan. 2, 2025 after a 31-year career at the facility. The IVH leadership team has commenced the process of searching for her replacement.

Penny Cutler-Bermudez, a Michigan native who has been employed at the Iowa Veterans Home since 1993 and worked her way up to the role of licensed nursing home administrator for the last six years, has formally announced that she will retire from her position effective Jan. 2, 2025.

“On behalf of Iowans and Iowa Veterans, I thank Penny Cutler-Bermudez for her professionalism, candor, and commitment to this important mission. Just as importantly, I am grateful for her leading, mentoring, and developing the next generation of teammates at the Iowa Veterans Home. While she will be missed, her impact and influence will be felt for decades,” Commandant Todd Jacobus said of his colleague.

A journey that started when Cutler-Bermudez, then 29 years old, came to Marshalltown with her first husband after he was hired to pastor a church here, will soon come to an end, but she is confident the approximately 400 veterans and spouses who reside at IVH will remain in good hands once her departure is finalized. Although her passion at the time she arrived was labor and delivery nursing, members of the congregation encouraged her to look for a job at the state’s largest nursing home situated in the northwest part of town.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s not my passion,’ but I agreed to come part time while I was looking for it. And of course, I’m still here. I fell in love with the mission,” she said. “I worked as an evening RN, and I was mentored by a couple of nurses who taught me the honor of serving veterans and what it meant to be a primary nurse. And four months later, I was offered the opportunity to be a nursing supervisor in the Malloy building.”

After training with two “amazing” nurses — Char McGrew and Arlene Lange — Cutler-Bermudez dove into her first leadership role and found that she loved the job because of the opportunity to help frontline staff and work directly with the residents.

“Even though you’re in leadership, you’re out there with the staff, and you have the ability to be in people’s homes and have some ability to meet their goals and work with their families, and it was amazing,” she said.

After 13 years with that title, she moved into a supervisory role over physical and occupational therapy, recreation and volunteer services and grew equally fond of the new job. But that position was eliminated during a reorganization, and Cutler-Bermudez was then offered the chance to become the director of human resources. From there, she began working with the licensed nursing home administrator at the time, Susan Wilkinson, who encouraged her to pursue her own license.

At first, Cutler-Bermudez wasn’t interested and actually hoped Wilkinson would stay in the position longer, but she was intrigued by the prospect of learning more about the regulations governing the facility and all of the responsibilities that came with a job at such a large facility. Thus, she started taking classes at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), and with encouragement and support from former Commandant Timon Oujiri, she took on the position in 2018.

The main duty of the LNHA, Cutler-Bermudez said, is to ensure that IVH is in compliance with all state and federal regulations, and the number of regulations has continued to increase over the last three decades.

“It’s everything from making sure that the water temperature is what it needs to be for baths (to ensuring) that we have the staffing numbers that are regulated to provide the care that’s necessary. It’s making sure that our staff are fit tested for respirators. It’s knowing the infection control guidelines and following all of those regulations,” she said. “It’s making sure that our food carts are delivered at the appropriate time, and the food’s at the right temperature and it’s stored appropriately. And every food item is stored at the right temperature. I mean, there’s regulations for everything.”

Some additional requirements include that every resident’s care plan is individualized and focused on their wishes, and while it can be a lot to process, Cutler-Bermudez feels they are OK because they’re aimed at ensuring the highest standard of service. In addition to the regulations, the biggest change she’s noticed in 31 years is technology — when she started, everyone charted on paper, and there were no cell phones.

“But I would say the passion and delivery of care for our residents has never changed. The love for veterans and the pride in caring for them is the constant,” Cutler-Bermudez said.

She can also remember days when residents shared rooms with four to six beds, one bathroom and no shower without walking down a hallway, but today, each of them can live in a private room with their own shower and bathroom — which Cutler-Bermudez described as a testament to the dignity they are provided.

In reflecting on the highlights and challenges of her tenure, she said receiving the Governor’s Excellence Award in 2024 was one of her proudest moments, and in terms of challenges, few stand out more obviously than the COVID-19 pandemic, which was particularly hard on nursing homes housing populations highly vulnerable to illness.

“If somebody had told me that was gonna happen, I might’ve looked at that (position) differently, but looking back, the absolute resilience of the workforce to come beside each other and do whatever it took to care for residents who had to be isolated in a way we never could’ve imagined. We had to find a way to serve each of them their meals and their cares without causing risk of infection to anyone else,” Cutler-Bermudez said.

IVH leadership and staff fought to secure personal protective equipment (PPE) and waited for the approval of a vaccine, and most of the non-essential activities and appointments and activities were put on hold during the height of the pandemic.

“It’s incredible. Hardly anyone left the mission. They wanted to be part of serving (our veterans). It went on a long time, but our senior team worked seven days a week for almost six months making sure we could get the supplies in,” she said.

Cutler-Bermudez engaged in daily calls with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to see how processes were changing as new information came in, and she was proud to report that IVH lost “very few” residents during the pandemic.

“We opened up a COVID unit and we cheered outside, lined up with gowns on, (for) every resident who came home, and I think they all came home except four,” she said. “And in a facility with 500 residents at the time. We just celebrated the incredible job that our staff were doing. Our maintenance team built cuddle curtains. We found ways for our families to get to our loved ones, and I’m proud of that probably more than anything (else) in my six years.”

In reflecting on her decision to retire, Cutler-Bermudez said her husband Pompilio, an Emerson retiree himself, is ready to spend more time with their nine combined children — her son Dex Walker and Pompilio’s eight kids — along with 12 grandchildren across three countries and five states. She is prepared to hand off the torch to whoever her successor ends up being and work with that individual to ensure a smooth transition in partnership with the senior leadership team. “I am proud of them, and I have loved every part of the mission. But they don’t need me. They can move forward, and I welcome them to change and grow and just continue to look at new ways to serve residents.”

Cutler-Bermudez said the controversial 2024 realignment plan affecting a total of 15 jobs at IVH — primarily in the recreation department — and the subsequent protest held on July 17, during which many of the demonstrators strongly criticized the administrative team, had “no impact” on her decision to leave.

“I knew that we needed to do a reorganization to better look at our resources with our decision to go to private rooms. We’ve reduced our census, and we have a memory care unit of 120 residents. That’s growing, and residents are coming in more acutely ill because, fortunately, there’s resources through the VA system to stay home longer, and that’s (in) the best interest of them,” she said. “So it was time to re-look at how we deliver our recreational services, and they’re doing an awesome job. In a short time, we’re seeing just some neat focus on how we do deliver recreation and our memory care.”

The changes, she said, have not resulted in a reduction in activities for residents, and the majority of staff whose positions were affected have stayed on and moved into other roles at IVH — a situation Cutler-Bermudez herself experienced when her PT/OT job was eliminated in the past.

“The change was really not as big as it appeared, maybe, in all of the social media posts that happened. Sometimes people don’t have the whole story, and sometimes those who respond don’t have the whole story either,” she said. “But, you know, we welcome everyone to come out and see for themselves what the delivery of services are here because it’s so fun to walk through the halls and see the smiles and see the joy in our residents’ faces, and I don’t for one second believe that our residents have had any changes that are negatively impacting their living.”

Now that all is almost said and done, Cutler-Bermudez — who noted that five of she and Pompilio’s children have worked at IVH themselves as CNAs — would recommend the facility to anyone looking for a job and an opportunity to serve those who have served the country. She touted the training available for individuals with minimal to no experience and the strong partnership with Marshalltown Community College (MCC) over the years, and of course, working for the state guarantees enrollment in the Iowa Public Employees Retirement System, better known by its acronym IPERS.

“I would tell anyone that I was blessed by having a career here, and I would say it’s a great path for people to follow,” Cutler-Bermudez said.

According to Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs Spokesman Karl Lettow, Jacobus and the human resources department will lead the search for the next licensed nursing home administrator, and they are currently in the process of advertising the position in hopes of attracting qualified applicants. From there, interviews will be conducted, and the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) will ultimately have to sign off on the hire.

The goal is to have someone in place before Cutler-Bermudez’s last day, and Lettow said that ideally, the next administrator will be able to train alongside her.

“We’re really grateful to Penny for keeping herself available and flexible to help us through that part once we get there,” he said.

——

Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.