This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

  • Roy Lee Ross, Jr. sentenced

    Roy Lee Ross, Jr. sentenced

    We wrote about Roy Lee Ross, Junior, aka Daniel Alfred Sullivan Jr., last August when he was arrested for defrauding the Veterans’ Affairs Department of more than $143,000. In 2007, the VA diagnosed his Daniel Alfred Sullivan Jr. persona with PTSD for his Vietnam wartime service and he got a butt-load of money for it. Turns out that he had never served in Vietnam. Ross enlisted in 1973 and was stationed in Germany. The closest he got to Vietnam was Hawaii in 1978 right before he deserted and got his Other Than Honorable discharge.

    He pleaded guilty in February, and he was sentenced last month to one year and one day in prison, two years of supervised release, $143,000 of restitution in $25 monthly installments. He’s 64 years old, so it’s doubtful he’ll live long enough to pay the VA back – at that rate he’d have to live another 477 years.

    Thanks to Troy for the tip on his sentence.

    Ross Sentencing Doc by JonnLilyea on Scribd

  • VA fires Toby Mathew

    VA fires Toby Mathew

    Fox News reports that yet another director has been fired by the VA – this one, Toby Mathew, in Louisiana.

    The director of the beleaguered Shreveport VA hospital in Louisiana has been fired following a three-year tenure filled with scandal including accusations of covering up a secret wait-list, creating severe staffing shortages and refusing to buy essentials like vital signs machines, linens or mattresses.

    Toby Mathew, who became director of Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in June 2014, was fired on April 13 due to “charges related to general misconduct, and failure to follow policy and provide effective oversight of the Center’s credentialing and privileging program,” said an internal VA memo obtained by Fox News.

    […]

    The VA confirmed his removal in a brief statement: “Toby Mathew was removed from employment as director of the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana effective April 13, and he is no longer at VA.”

    From KTBS;

    In just over two years, he racked up a long list of complaints, spelled out in three formal requests seeking an investigation. KTBS 3 News obtained copies of those complaints.The first, dated September 2, 2016, says, “Mathew has a consistent pattern of bullying, intimidation, discrimination, harassment and retaliation against many staff members … that clearly violates a number of policies.”

    Funny how it wasn’t possible to fire poor performers at the VA in the past, but suddenly two directors have been tossed to the curb in the last few months.

    Thanks to Mick for the tip.

  • Me, the VA and the PVA

    Me, the VA and the PVA

    I feel guilty when I have to write stories about the VA that put them in a bad light. The Veterans’ Affairs Department has been very, very good to me. The Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) represent me in my dealings with them, and they’ve been stellar, too. They got my disability claim approved in 45 days.

    For those of you who may not know, I have Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) a motor neurone disease, which causes the destruction of neurons, which control voluntary muscles. In most cases, there is no known cause of ALS with 90% of 95% cases being a mystery. Doctors at Walter Reed first diagnosed my condition back in 2010, but I didn’t apply to increase my disability claim with the VA until 2013.

    Within weeks after my claim was approved, the local clinic in Cumberland, Maryland (a satellite of the Martinsburg WV, VA Medical Center) began making appoints with me for my general health care. They reached out to me. All of my dealings with the clinic have been great. It’s almost as if I’m the only patient assigned to the clinic. You know, the way health care should be.

    Now, the Martinsburg hospital is an absolute shithole. It’s like going to a hospital in the 1950s, but the care there is pretty good, though, despite the working conditions. I spent a year there one week last February.

    My condition makes it harder for me to get around, so my doctor recommended that I get on their “Home Care Team” program – the nurses and doctors come to my house and gather their bloodwork and check on me every three months or so. They decided that I needed to talk to an ALS team. The nearest teams were in DC (about 2 1/2 hours away), so last week, we set up a telelink by computer so that I got to “see” my team as they paraded across my computer screen. It was the first time they had done anything like that. So, I’m like a pioneer, I guess.

    I know my story may not be typical of the treatment many of you have received from the VA, but what happens in my part of the country is what should be happening in every VA facility in the country. I know that its popular to advocate for a privatization of the VA health care system, but my experience here proves that the system can work for veterans and the other facilities should be learning from the systems that are working.

  • Brian Hawkins fired at DC VA Hospital

    Brian Hawkins fired at DC VA Hospital

    WTTG Fox5 in DC reports that the director of the VA medical center in the District of Columbia, Brian Hawkins, has been relieved from his position there due to gross mismanagement of the facilities there. Conditions were so bad, that the OIG published an interim report before their complete investigation had ended.

    The VA Office of the Inspector General’s Rapid Response team came to the medical center on March 29 to begin its investigation and also returned for another visit last week.

    According to the preliminary report released on Wednesday, it was found the medical center ran out of supplies needed for patient procedures and had to borrow them from a private hospital.

    There was also $150 million of equipment that hasn’t been inventoried and can’t be accounted. Facilities were found to be filthy and hazardous.

    They’ve named Colonel Lawrence Connell U. S. Army (Ret) as the DC VA’s Acting Medical Center Director.

    He served more than 30 years as an Army medical service officer including 15 years as a MEDEVAC Pilot as well as Chief Operating Officer, Pacific Regional Medical Command, Honolulu, Hawaii; Chief Executive Officer of Stuttgart (Germany) U.S. Army Medical Health Clinic; Commander of the 43rd Area Support Medical Battalion; and other medical-related staff positions.

    From WTOP;

    According to the watchdog report, the center frequently ran out of supplies, ranging from special equipment for dialysis treatments and vascular surgery to common supplies such as oxygen tubes and alcohol pads. The shortages forced the center to cancel some patient procedures.

    […]

    The full investigation will determine whether patient harm resulted from any of the shortcomings, the report stated. For now, “It’s too early for us to make those kind of findings,” Missal said. “Clearly, patients were impacted by this. Procedures were postponed; procedures were canceled. But we haven’t yet identified the specific risks to an individual patient.”

    The investigation was spurred by a March 21 anonymous complaint to the IG.

    In that video, a VA employee blames Congress for a lack of funding. I disagree. It’s probably more a result of misappropriation of funds. We can be reasonably certain that Brian Hawkins will still be working somewhere at the VA at his current pay.

  • Shulkin wants to fire pr0n-watching VA employee

    Shulkin wants to fire pr0n-watching VA employee

    The Military Times reports that VA Secretary David Shulkin want to fire a Houston-area VA employee who was busted looking at pr0n while this person was supposed to be treating a veteran.

    Because of current federal laws, the employee will receive at least one month’s pay while the appeals process plays out.

    Shulkin called that unacceptable.

    “This is an example of why we need accountability legislation as soon as possible,” he said in a statement. “Current legislation in Congress reduces the amount of time we have to wait before taking action. I look forward to working with both the Senate and the House to ensure final legislation gives us the flexibility we need.”

    In the government office where I worked in a former life, they busted a fellow watching adult material on our network and they fired him immediately, out of a cannon. This seems to me to be a VA problem.

    Shulkin is asking Congress to give him the authority to dump the ash and trash at the VA and they should do it sooner rather than later. However, the unions and their minions in Congress will interfere.

  • Guidance for Presidential Portraits in VA facilities

    Guidance for Presidential Portraits in VA facilities

    The Veterans’ Affairs blog posts guidance for VA facilities in regards to the Presidential Portraits;

    By direction of the secretary, VA facilities have been instructed to temporarily display an image from the White House’s website until an official portrait of President Trump is released.

    All VA facilities have been directed to download and print photos of both the president and Secretary Shulkin, and every facility is expected to have them appropriately displayed immediately. The president’s photo, while not his official portrait, is currently used by the White House on its website and social media platforms. Once VA receives the official photo of President Trump, facilities will replace the temporary version.

    I happened to have an orderly room when President Clinton took office on January 20, 1993 and we had his portrait ready to hang weeks before the inauguration and at the moment he took the oath of office I replaced the portrait of GHW Bush with William Jefferson Clinton’s portrait. So what’s the hold up, VA?

    The President really needs a less angry portrait as his official picture, though.

  • West Palm Beach VA hospital won’t hang Trump portrait

    West Palm Beach VA hospital won’t hang Trump portrait

    Everyone who has been in the military knows how important it is to have the correct portrait of their commander-in-chief hanging in the orderly room. Your First Sergeant impressed that upon you. That’s why veterans at the West Palm Beach VA hospital told their Congressman, Brian Mast, a disabled, wounded veteran himself, that hospital didn’t have President Trump’s portrait hanging in the empty space at their entrance. CBS12 link;

    Congressman Brian Mast, himself a veteran, brought the men and the portraits to the facility and demanded they be installed. The whole thing was caught on camera.

    This video shows first term Congressman Brian Mast and a group of veterans taking action.

    […]

    “Two blank holes, it’s been 60 something days now,” said Veteran John Rourke. “The veterans administration has been asked about it a few times, the local VA hospital has and they haven’t had any real reason other than they didn’t have the picture, which is readily available.”

    The VA officials took the portrait down after the congressman left;

    A VA spokeswoman tells CBS 12 News , the congressman’s actions and the actions of the veterans who accompanied him were “inappropriate” and the cell phone video was not legally obtained.

  • Billy K. Alumbaugh; driving blind

    AZtoVA sends us a link to the story of 61-year-old Billy K. Alumbaugh who, along with his ex-wife Debra, perpetrated a fraud upon the Veterans Affairs Department claiming that he was blind;

    According to the indictment unsealed last week, while specialists at the Veterans Administration hospital in Wichita were unable to identify medical reasons for his blindness, Billy was receiving a supplemental monthly pension as he claimed he was unable to drive, and needed assistance to perform routine activities such as reading medication labels, grocery shopping and going to doctor appointments. He collected $63,000.

    Alumbaugh maintained his driver license which didn’t even indicate that he needed corrective lenses to operate his vehicle. His ex-wife would drive him to his VA appointments and they were observed switching seats when they were a few miles from the facility.

    If convicted, the pair face up to five years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on the conspiracy charge, and up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000 on the theft charge.