VA target of fresh health-care complaints
WASHINGTON — New complaints about long wait lists and falsified patient appointment reports have surfaced at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics across the country, the department’s internal watchdog said yesterday, but he said there’s no proof so far that delays in treatment have caused any patient’s death.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said he was “mad as hell” about allegations of severe problems and said he was looking for results from a nationwide audit. He rejected calls for him to resign and a senator’s suggestion that he call in the FBI to investigate.
At a sometimes-combative congressional hearing, Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general, said that after an initial review of 17 people
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who died while awaiting appointments at the Phoenix VA hospital, none of the deaths appeared to have been caused by delays in treatment.
“It’s one thing to be on a waiting list, and it’s another thing to conclude that as a result of being on the waiting list that’s the cause of death, depending on what your illness might have been at the beginning,” Griffin told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
Griffin said his office is working off several lists of patients at the Phoenix facility, which treats more than 80,000 veterans a year. He said a widely reported list of 40 patients who died while awaiting appointments “does not represent the total number of veterans that we’re looking at.”
He said his office has 185 employees working on the Phoenix case and he expects to have a report completed in August.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona and the Justice Department also are assisting in the investigation.
Since reports of the Phoenix problems came to light last month, allegations about problems at VA facilities have spread nationwide. At least 10 new allegations about manipulated waiting times and other problems have surfaced in the past three weeks, Griffin said.
Shinseki told the committee he hopes to have preliminary results within three weeks on audits he ordered at the VA’s 150 medical centers and 820 community outpatient clinics nationwide to determine how widespread the treatment delays and falsified reports are.
When the committee’s chairman, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked whether VA officials at the facilities were “cooking the books,” Shinseki replied, “I’m not aware, other than a number of isolated cases, where there is evidence of that.”
Shinseki resisted calls from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, DConn., to call in the FBI.
“Isn’t there evidence here of criminal wrongdoing — that is, falsifying records, false statements to the federal government? That’s a crime,” said Blumenthal, a former state attorney general and federal prosecutor.
The VA operates the largest single health-care system in the country, serving about 9 million veterans a year. Surveys show that patients are mostly satisfied with their care but that access is becoming more of a problem.
Vietnam veterans are aging, and increasing numbers of vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are seeking treatment for physical and mental-health problems.
The agency has a 14-day target for seeing patients after they ask for appointments. Some lawmakers called that target unrealistic and said basing employee bonuses and pay raises on it is outrageous.
“Giving bonuses to hospital directors for running a system that places priority on gaming the system and keeping their (wait list) numbers down — rather than provide care to veterans — must come to an end,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Shinseki said he was “mad as hell” over the allegations, vowed to hold employees accountable for any misconduct and welcomed President Barack Obama’s appointment on Wednesday of deputy White House chief of staff Rob Nabors to review VA health-care procedures.
“Any adverse event for a veteran within our care is one too many,” Shinseki said.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called for an independent investigation: “Our veterans are our heroes, and they deserve better than a White House insider-led investigation.”