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VA whistleblowers to detail retribution
« on: July 08, 2014, 12:19:43 pm »
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=EB113C85-2132-450E-A8F9-ED7D60612363

 VA whistleblowers to detail retribution
By: Lauren French
July 8, 2014 12:01 AM EDT

House lawmakers will hear testimony on Tuesday from whistleblowers who accuse the Department of Veterans Affairs of retaliating against them for exposing shoddy medical care.

The VA would often force whistleblowers into administrative leave after they raised concerns about lagging health care quality stemming from overworked nurses or under-staffed medical centers, according to testimony from four witnesses set to testify before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

The retaliation was pervasive and often carried out in a personal manner, the witnesses will testify. Katherine Mitchell, a 16-year VA employee who worked at facilities in Phoenix, said nurses there refused to care for her patients after she began complaining about issues within the medical center.



“After reporting hundreds of cases, eventually about 20 [percent] of the ER nurses actively began to impede care of my own ER patients. Those nurses stopped initiating protocol orders for me, providing me with verbal patient reports, handing me EKGs, and answering basic questions I asked,” Mitchell wrote.

Mitchell said she raised concerns that inexperienced nurses were missing signs of “internal head bleeding, strokes, heart attacks, pneumonias, and dehydration” in patients at the ER.

After submitting a report detailing the retaliation to the VA’s inspector general, Mitchell said she was placed on administrative leave and accused of leaking confidential patient information.

Lawmakers will also hear testimony from Carolyn Lerner, the head of the Office of Special Counsel and Carolyn Clancy, the acting under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs.



Their testimony comes as the VA attempts to recover from a scandal that toppled its former secretary, Eric Shinseki. President Barack Obama has nominated Bob McDonald, the former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, as the next VA secretary. Meanwhile, House and Senate negotiators are working to finalize legislation to give new powers to the secretary to fire employees accused of mismanagement.

Retaliation against whistleblowers has emerged as a key problem in the agency’s culture. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has requested sweeping information from the special counsel office on investigations of mistreatment and punishment for employees who raised concerns over health care quality.

Lerner’s office has said it is looking into claims that 37 whistleblowers were retaliated against at VA centers across the country.

The whistleblowers describe a culture where employees - even in management roles - who raised concerns about the quality of care at VA facilities were met with a “mutiny” and abruptly forced into legal conflict with the VA.

Jose Mathews, the chief of psychiatry at the St. Louis VA, will discuss how doctors at his hospital “failed the same vulnerable population it was designed to serve.” In prepared testimony, Mathews notes that veterans who came to the outpatient treatment center with “urgent” mental health needs were turned away, in one instance without refills of medication.

But when Mathews said he tried to institute reforms, such as mandating doctors saw at minimum 19 veterans a day and creating a triage system for “high intensity care” patients, he said he met resistance, including being fired from his post as chief.

“There was a significant amount of resistance from many psychiatrists and other specialties. I was yelled at on many occasions, I was told repeatedly, ‘this is the VA’ to explain away the poor access to care,” Mathews wrote.

The hearing is at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
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