Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

Continued Veterans Administration Failure

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Dr Dale Klein is, formally, on the Veterans Administration payroll—to the tune of a $250,000/yr salary—but he’s not employed by them, and so his pain management skills are actively denied our veterans who would benefit from them.  Klein blew the whistle on his proximate employer’s—Southeast Missouri John J Pershing VA facility—secret waiting lists and wait time manipulation practices.  Now he’s shunned by his employers and banished to a room by himself where he’s denied access to his patients and patients are denied access to him.

VA management is continuing to refuse to clean up its act, preferring to serve their employed bureaucrats rather than, and at the direct expense of our veterans.  This has to stop, and the only way is to disband VA and commit its budget—all of it, including overhead—to vouchers for our veterans with which they can see doctors, clinics, and hospitals of their choice.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The VA…Continues

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Now it’s the Veterans Administration hospital in Durham, NC, that’s come to light.

Hanna and Stephen McMenamin posted photos of two aging veterans in the hospital’s waiting room who were in obvious pain and getting no help, for hours.  One man was having trouble staying in his wheel chair, and another wound up lying on the floor because he kept asking for a place to lie down and getting no response.  The second veteran finally got a response—to make him get back in his waiting room chair.

Medical Center Director DeAnne Seekins finally reacted, after the McMenamins posted their photos:

It is an honor to serve America’s heroes and actions that do not align with our core values will not be tolerated. We pride ourselves on providing the highest quality care to the Veterans we serve and being responsive to our patient’s needs. Veterans deserve nothing less.

Really? When are you going to start living up to these pretty words?  When was the last time you left your office and actually walked the floor to see how things were going?  You would have seen this.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The VA Fails Again

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The wife of an Iraq veteran, blinded by a suicide bomber has a story to tell (RTWT) from the veteran’s spouse’s perspective, and she has asked the central question.  Her question is this:

[T]here has to be a better way for our federal government to make it easier for the spouses, parents, and siblings who have to quit their jobs and forfeit their livelihoods to care for an injured veteran.

Her husband’s—and her—problems with this failed agency include things like this [emphasis added]:

My first encounter with the military bureaucracy came days after I arrived at Walter Reed to see Scotty, a West Point graduate, after he’d been flown in from Iraq.  …  I was supposed to be on “orders” and receiving a stipend for food, but somewhere along the way someone filled out the form incorrectly. The man I spoke to said that it would be a huge hassle to try to fix it….

But being blinded is no big deal.

And

In a world where technology is making almost all aspects of life easier, why isn’t there a website, a liaison, or an advocate to fill out government paperwork and get deserving veterans the benefits they were promised and deserved? When I asked for help, someone suggested we hire a lawyer.

Sure.  It’s entirely appropriate to sue a government agency to force it to perform, but it’s wholly unreasonable to expect that agency to perform on its own initiative.

And this performance regarding a potentially lethal situation:

Most recently, Scotty had an infection that needed emergency care. Upon arriving at the VA emergency room, which was packed, I noticed that there were at least four people behind the counter for paperwork. They informed us it would be a four to five hour wait to see a doctor.

On the other hand, it is really a hassle for a government hospital to treat emergencies.  Especially with all that bothersome paperwork that has to be done first.

This wife proposes making the VA run more like a business, and giving the customer what the customer needs.

Indeed.  Run the thing like a business: it’s failed and has been a failure for years; close it down.  Disband the VA altogether, and use its current budget (adjusted in subsequent years for inflation and for the number of veterans, whose care also will ebb and flow with age and with the number of wars from which they’re returning) as vouchers paid directly to the veterans so they can get their own doctors, see their own clinics and hospitals, and get proper care from providers of their choice.  Let the customers—our veterans and their families—get what they need.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Veterans Administration Strikes Again

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And once again, its blow contributes to a death. This time, it’s the VA’s Talihina, Oklahoma, facility, and this place allowed maggots to breed in the injury of a veteran.

Executive Director Myles Deering said the maggots were discovered while the patient was alive but were not the cause of his death. He said the man came into the center with an infection.

Deering tried to play down the incident:

He did not succumb as a result of the parasites.  He succumbed as a result of the sepsis.

This is the level of attention, much less actual medical care, our veterans get from the VA.  Never mind that if this facility’s imitation medical personnel had taken the infection seriously, they would have noticed the maggots and maybe done something about them.  And maybe cleaned up the flies and the flies’ eggs whence the maggots came.  And maybe cleaned up the whole facility a little bit.

Four persons, a physician’s assistant and the Talihina facility’s Director of Nursing and two other nurses, have been allowed to resign over the matter.  Never mind any accountability for these.  Never mind the allegedly attending physician responsible for this veteran’s care receiving being held accountable, so far, at least.

It’s long past time to get rid of the VA and to use its budget and what would have been its budgets in succeeding years to provide vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors and hospitals they choose.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The VA Strikes Again

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Reform the Veterans Administration?  It’s still not happening.  It’s hard to believe the folks nominally in charge (they can’t be termed “leadership”) are even trying.

An Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital already under fire for excessive wait times, festering black mold and kitchen cockroaches faces a new shame—the bodies of dead patients left unclaimed in the morgue for up to two months without proper burial, whistleblower documents allege.

One example of the VA’s…failure…here is in this string of emails, beginning 7 Dec 2015, that a whistleblower provided outside authorities.

“[There is] an invoice for an unclaimed veteran that has been here for over 30 days. Please approve for burial at Abraham Lincoln,” the clerk wrote to [Chief of Patient Administrative Services, Christopher] Wirtjes and several others.

Three days later, the clerk wrote again: “Approval of unclaimed Vet D?? Status?”

On Dec 23, the clerk wrote to human resources: “Any further on my poor unclaimed? I WILL file a police report, but I hate doing that…”

Three weeks, and Wirtjes couldn’t even be bothered to respond.

There have been no consequences for Wirtjes, either.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.