Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

Back in April, we talked about Brian Hawkins, who at the time was the director of the Washington, DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was cached to a desk somewhere, still drawing his pay.

Today we get the news from Fox that he’s been canned after a deeper investigation;

The report also noted that approximately $150 million worth of medical supplies had not been inventoried, leading to equipment shortages. In at least one instance earlier this year, the medical center ran out of bloodlines for dialysis patients and was only able to provide dialysis services because staff members borrowed bloodlines from a private hospital.

Fox5 DC quotes from the VA statement announcing Hawkins’ firing;

“On July 28, VA terminated the employment of former Washington DC VA Medical Center Director Brian Hawkins because he failed to provide effective leadership at the medical center,” the Department of Veterans Affairs said in a statement. “This action underscores VA’s commitment to holding all employees accountable if they fail to do their jobs or live up to VA’s values.”

The statement goes on to address recent improvements under Washington DC VA Medical Center Director acting director Lawrence Connell saying the hospital is continuing aggressive recruiting and hiring efforts, implementing an Environmental Management Service support contract to supplement cleaning the facility, overhauled medical supply monitoring, inventoried and reorganized all of its primary supply areas in its warehouse and ordered 2,700 new medical instruments.

When I used the DC VA facilities, it was a dangerous place and a playground for the homeless men in the area, few of whom were real veterans. I hope that changes under new leadership.

According to KSAT, retired Master Sergeant Mack Cole Jr. was convicted in federal court of defrauding the Veterans’ Affairs Department for more than seven years. Investigators took video of Cole mowing his lawn and walking around his home unassisted in spite of his claims that “he no longer had “any ability to walk” and “dreams of walking again.””

By misrepresenting the scope of his injuries, Cole was able to receive a higher level of benefits, adaptations to his home and durable medical equipment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Cole, a retired Army master sergeant, remains free on bond while awaiting sentencing in September.

He faces up to 50 years in prison.

According to the article, the VA has opened 111 investigations for fraud so far this year and they’ve recovered about $125 million in restitution and fines. It seems to me that it would be easier to weed out the fraudsters before they get a check – but that’s just me, I guess.

The Boston Globe reports that two officials of the Manchester, New Hampshire VA hospital have been canned after the paper’s investigation of conditions there.

The hospital’s chief of medicine, Dr. Stewart Levenson, said he had “never seen a hospital run this poorly.”

The staffers, who reported the Manchester hospital to a federal whistle-blower agency, described an operating room infested with flies, veterans with crippling spinal damage that might have been prevented, and surgical instruments that are obsolete and sometimes unsterile.

The Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin fired hospital Director Danielle Ocker and Chief of Staff James Schlosser who will shuffled off to other duties, according to ABC News.

Ocker and Schlosser acknowledged significant cuts in services, such as the elimination of cataract surgery, and administrative problems, such as ordering a $1 million nuclear medicine camera but never installing it because it was too big for the examination room. As a result, the hospital stopped offering nuclear stress tests for heart disease risk and bone scans that can detect tumors this year.

But Ocker and Schlosser said they were surprised that so many medical staff members reported the problems to federal investigators. They said the hospital was addressing the shortcomings and patient safety hasn’t been compromised.

The Globe also noted that the hospital was rated one of the best VA facility in the country until their report.

Despite the problems at the facility, it was in 2016 given four out of five stars by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which, before the story was published, defended that decision.

The whistle-blowers have alleged that the four top administrators, including Schlosser, the only doctor, were more concerned with performance ratings than with properly treating the roughly 25,000 veterans who go to Manchester for outpatient care and day surgery annually.

The Veterans’ Affairs Department secretary warned Congress that the Veterans’ Choice program may run out of money in mid-August. The new program which was implemented to relieve some of the pressures on the VA healthcare a few years ago after the scandal-ridden agency was caught flat-footed in their pursuit of fulfilling their obligations across the country. A few weeks after the Veterans’ Choice program was instituted, the Obama Administration declared that it was unsuccessful and began dismantling it.

So Secretary Shulkin is forced to shake a tin cup at Congress to secure funding for the program, which was only meant to be stop-gap while the VA retooled it’s healthcare system;

Shulkin, however, blamed the lack of funding on unanticipated demand for the program and suggested that the 2018 budget request might need to be adjusted.

“On financial projections, we have to do better,” he told the committee. “We do not want to see veterans impacted at all by our inability to manage budgets.”

Moran joined three other senators June 21 in writing a letter to the VA supporting emergency funds to cover the Choice shortfall, but admonishing the department for its past missteps:

Unless Congress appropriates emergency funding to continue the Veterans Choice Program, hundreds of thousands of veterans who now rely on the Choice Card will be sent back to a VA that cannot effectively manage or coordinate their care. We cannot send our veterans back to the pre-scandal days in which veterans were subjected to unacceptable wait-times.

I’m using Veterans’ Choice for the first time next month for some outpatient things and I’m hating it. Civilian doctors and their staffs are such primadonnas. I don’t know what the hold up is, but the appointment in July was scheduled in March – real convenient and a time saver.

The Department of Justice reports that Alexander Kudla, a former licensed practical nurse who worked for Wilmington Veterans Affairs Medical Center was sentenced in Federal court for stealing more than $22,000 from a disabled veteran.

A VAMC patient requested help withdrawing funds from an ATM due to the patient’s physical limitations. Kudla abused his position at the VAMC as well as the trust of the victim by withdrawing funds from the victim’s bank account for Kudla’s personal use on over 40 occasions between February 2015 and July 2015. As part of his sentence, the District Court ordered Kudla to pay full restitution of $22,320 to the victim, with $4,000 due immediately.

Kudla is no longer employed with the VAMC or with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “We take allegations of employee misconduct very seriously, especially when those allegations are related to the welfare of our Veterans. We are grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecuting this case and we will continue to be vigilant, ensuring Veterans receive care and treatment in a safe and caring environment,” said Vince Kane, director of the Wilmington VA Medical Center.

Yeah, well, Kudla didn’t get any jail time – he got three years on probation and he has to pay the veteran back