This time it’s the Marion, IL, Veterans Administration clinic.
In 1971 Kirby Williams went to Vietnam as a US Army draftee and worked as a finance clerk. In 2010 he went to a Veterans Affairs clinic in southern Illinois where a radiologist took a scan of his kidneys.
Unfortunately, the radiologist missed a 2- to 3-centimeter mass in one of his kidneys, and by last December that mass had grown to between 7 and 8 centimeters. Now the 66-year-old has, at most, two to five years to live.
Williams isn’t the only victim.
Within weeks…of starting at the VA [in March of 2016!], he [Dr L Anthony Leskosky, a board-certified radiologist] noticed patients previously diagnosed as healthy had radiology scans from years prior documenting grave conditions. These conditions, such as cancers, aortic aneurysms, bleeding ulcers and obstructions in their small bowel and colon—if left untreated—could cause patients tremendous pain or even premature death.
“In radiology, we compare current scans to old studies, so I was pulling up the last two years of the scans. That’s when I noticed the radiologists had called their previous exams ‘normal,’ but I would see a mass on the older scans, and then on my scan, I would see the mass had enlarged, and in some cases become a spreading cancer. Usually that is not survivable,” Leskosky said.
As many as four to five times a day, Leskosky said, he found serious errors in prior readings….
Leskosky whistleblew on this and too many other such incompetencies, and the VA’s answer was to fire him rather than correct the problem.
That’s damning enough, but read the whole article.
President Donald Trump touts improvements in the VA, and there have been some. However, they’re too little, too small, and too late, and the VA’s destructiveness continues. The Veterans Administration must be disbanded and its budget sent to our veterans as vouchers with which they can seek medical care with doctors of their choosing at medical facilities of their choosing. And get actual treatment.
Veteranos Administratio delende est.