Editorial roundup

Sept. 11

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis

Veteran care

Tennessee, the Volunteer State, is home to half a million veterans and three of the nation’s most troubled Veterans Administration hospitals.

Of 10 facilities that received one out of five stars in the VA’s own internal quality-of-care ranking, three are in Tennessee — Memphis, Nashville and Murfreesboro.

The VA Medical Center in Memphis is one four in the country required to send weekly briefings to the VA’s top health official in Washington.

Reports of threats to patient safety in Memphis soared to more than 1,000 in 2016, up from 700 the year before, according to VA documents obtained by the USA Today Network.

In one case, a veteran with diabetes and poor circulation had to have a leg amputated after physicians found 10 inches of plastic packaging that VA providers had mistakenly embedded in an artery three weeks earlier.

“I’m disappointed and outraged by the many failures at the Memphis VA medical center, particularly the allegations regarding patient safety,” said U.S. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. “This is unacceptable, plain and simple.”

Unacceptable is one word for it. Others are disgraceful, dishonorable and predictable.

Roe’s committee has been investigating the Memphis VA since January. But the outrage he expressed last week, seconded by local U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen and David Kustoff, has become a common refrain in Washington.

The VA medical system, already struggling with aging Vietnam veterans, has been overwhelmed for more than a decade by veterans returning from one or more tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The VA’s more than $160 billion annual budget — the second largest in the federal government — has more than doubled since 2007. Meanwhile, demand for VA care has increased more than 200 percent.

The military estimates as many as one in five of the more than 2.6 million soldiers sent to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 is suffering from PTSI or some other form of blast-induced brain trauma.

Those veterans “are at a higher risk for lifelong medical problems, such as seizures, decline in neurocognitive functioning, dementia, and chronic diseases,” according to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Survivors return with higher rates of depression, addiction, mental illness, traumatic brain injuries and suicidal tendencies, not to mention limb amputations and other critical injuries.

A decade ago, the GAO warned Congress that the VA wasn’t prepared. Congress poured more money into the system,

In 2014, in response to news media reports inspired by whistle blowers, the House Committee on Veterans Affairs found that thousands of VA patients were being put on fake waiting lists that resulted in the deaths of dozens of veterans.

That same year, a White House investigation found “significant and chronic systematic failures” in VA hospitals across the country, and concluded the VA system “needs to be restructured and reformed.”

In response, Congress passed the Veterans Choice Act, which allows veterans to receive private medical care at government expense. Last month, President Trump signed an emergency spending bill injecting $2 billion into the program.

But last year, the Commission on Care, appointed by the President and Congress, found the Choice system deeply flawed by congressional restrictions, bureaucratic dysfunction and inadequate funding.

“The long-term viability of VHA care is threatened by problems with staffing, facilities, capital needs, information systems, health care disparities and procurement,” the commission declared. “Fixing these problems requires fundamental changes in governance and leadership of VHA.”

Changes are being made in Memphis under new director David Dunning, who started in May. In recent weeks, the chiefs of surgery, anesthesiology, and research have all been removed, according to internal documents.

As we’ve seen for a decade, short-term fixes aren’t enough. We call on Chairman Roe — a physician who served in the Army Medical Corps — and all of Congress to make systemic changes that will provide all veterans with prompt and quality medical care.

We sent men and women to Europe and the Pacific, to Korea and Vietnam, to the Persian Gulf and Iraq and Afghanistan. They went. We sent them to take care of us. They deserve the best care from us.