SCHENECTADY — A former clinical services director at Schenectady County’s Glendale Home nursing facility has been paid $225,000 to settle her lawsuit alleging she was fired without cause three years ago after filing an internal complaint about the medical director’s instructions to staff to suspend giving residents “unnecessary” medications during the coronavirus pandemic.
The directive had allegedly been done as a cost-savings measure and due to a staffing shortage, according to court records.
Kathryn Valley’s lawsuit, which was filed in state Supreme Court in March 2022, also accused the medical director, Dr. Ali Mirza, of berating her in a phone call and wrongly accusing her of ordering hospice care for a resident, which was considered a costly service.
Valley alleged she began to endure retribution at her job after she underwent surgery for a rare lung condition in 2019 before returning to work in January 2020. That same month, Mirza was appointed as the facility’s medical director and allegedly met with Valley, telling her “that she was overpaid, could be fired by him at any time, and was being spied on within Glendale Home,” according to the lawsuit.
In March 2020, as the pandemic struck New York, Valley continued working at the facility like many other coworkers who were also considered essential employees. She was sharing a small office with a nurse practitioner and had requested to have her own office, in part, due to her need to wear multiple masks when in close...
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