[humanser] VA Games

Tue Jul 13 00:51:13 UTC 2010

Dear Rick:

What does VIST stand for?  Visually Impaired Santa Trainees?

JD Townsend, LCSW
Daytona Beach, Florida, Earth, Sol System
Helping the light dependent to see.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rick Brown" <rlbrown1 at verizon.net>
To: "'Human Services Mailing List'" <humanser at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: [humanser] VA Games

> This has been going on for many years. At our VA, we stress the importance
> about seeing veteran's. When I first started working at the VA, they had 
> the
> reputation of doing this very thing. We now have a new director who 
> focuses
> on timely appointments for the veteran's. We recently won several awards 
> for
> these changes. Our veteran's are very happy with their services in my
> clinic. I serve around 800 veteran's a year. I make sure they are seen on
> time, and at least once a year for an annual review. When we get veteran's
> from the latest war, we immediately put them at the top of the list. And
> depending on their health issues, we see them within 30 days. The VA still
> has some ways to go on this issue, but our VA is making strides to improve
> care. As for my clinic, I make sure they are taken care of as soon as
> possible. I can't answer for other hospitals, but I can say that my clinic
> is doing the proper procedures for scheduling. I hope other VA's will
> follow, or get a new Director. Just my insight on the matter.
> Rick Brown, MSW
> VIST Coordinator
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of JD TOWNSEND
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 1:59 PM
> To: Human Services Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [humanser] VA Games
>
>
> Dear Mary Ann:
>
> Thank you for this article.  The local VA Clinic has had some of these
> issues, but I did not realize that this was a system-wide issue. 
> Especially
>
> as our Division is focusing on issues of returning Vets, this story is 
> well
> timed.
>
> Best to you.
>
>
> JD Townsend, LCSW
> Daytona Beach, Florida, Earth, Sol System
> Helping the light dependent to see.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mary Ann Rojek" <brightsmile1953 at comcast.net>
> To: "Human Services Mailing List" <humanser at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 12:59 AM
> Subject: [humanser] VA Games
>
>
> I received this article on another list and thought it was worth posting.
>
> Mary Ann
>
> Leaked Internal Memo Shows How VA Systematically Screws Over
> Wounded Vets
> to Maintain Performance Grades
>  By Nora Eisenberg, Alterationet
> Posted on June 30, 2010, Printed on July 1, 2010
> The Veterans Health Administration systematically delays and
> denies sick
> veterans medical care and masks it with bogus documentation.
> That's what
> the VA Inspector General and a number of veterans' advocates have
> been
> claiming since the early days of the Iraq War, when soldiers
> returning
> from Operation Enduring Freedom began flooding VA facilities.
> Now an
> internal department memo, posted Wednesday on a watchdog Web
> site,
> confirms these charges.
>  The April 26 memo from William Schoenhard, Deputy
> Undersecretary for
> Health Operations and Management, alerts supervisors overseeing
> scheduling
> in the nation's largest health care system that he has learned of
> unacceptable practices.  VA facilities have adopted what he calls
> "gaming
> strategies" in order to "improve scores on various access
> measures" by
> diminishing patient access to treatment.
>  An eight-page attachment identifies 24 "tricks" detected so
> far, but
> Schoenhard says there may be more.  Using fine-print rules to
> cancel
> patients' appointments is one of the more sinister strategies
> that
> Schoenhard describes.  Here, a patient arrives on time for an
> appointment
> only to be told he has no appointment.  When the patient shows
> the employee
> his/her appointment form, the employee shows the patient the fine
> print on
> the form, which says that patients who do not come 10 (sometimes
> 15)
> minutes early to check in risk cancellation.
>  In another example of the VA gaming the system, employees enter
> into the
> computer a later date (often by months) than the doctor has
> specified for
> a return visit.  Another practice is recording a patient's
> initial request
> to be treated in a paper log, not the computer system, then
> calling them
> in months or a full year later (law requires they be seen within
> 30 days)
> and recording that date as their first request to be seen.
>  In the block-scheduling strategy, employees book several
> patients in the
> same time slot for the same doctor or provider, leaving patients
> to wait
> for hours to be seen, sometimes for something as simple as a
> monthly
> prescription renewal, which, due to frustration or obligation,
> they
> sometimes leave without.
>  Paul Sullivan, director of the veterans advocacy group,
> Veterans for
> Common Sense (VCS), told Alterationet he believes Schoenhard's
> memo "forces a
> key leadership test upon VA Secretary Eric Shinseki" to end the
> shenanigans and solve the underlying problems.  "The constant
> stream of
> hurricane-force flooding of new combat veteran patients from the
> wars and
> into VA hospitals has totally overwhelmed VA and caused the
> improper
> gaming," Sullivan said, adding that the memo "reveals how VA
> takes the
> easy way out."
> VA Watchdog editor Larry Scott, who discovered the memo and has
> written of
> his suspicion of system-wide tricks since 2004, remains
> suspicious of the
> memo's effect and perhaps its intent.  The detailed explanations
> and
> illustrations of gaming strategies, Scott wrote on his site,
> amount to a
> message to employees bto find a better way to hide their sins."
> Sullivan
> told Alterationet he "hopes VA-BS intent is to end the harmful
> practice."
> Whatever the intention, VCS is urging Congress to hold an
> oversight
> hearing on the uncovered memo.  Paul Sullivan wants Congress to
> press VA
> for a "real plan" to address both the gaming of the system and
> the
> scarcity of resources the gaming hides.  Congress, he said, needs
> to learn
> how many veterans over the years have been harmed by the improper
> practices; what other practices have been used to hide VA's
> severe
> staffing problems; when and how VA will retrain all staff on the
> proper
> use of the appointment system; how VA will hold accountable VA
> leaders and
> employees who use illegal practices to delay and deny medical
> care; and
> how many more doctors and medical staff VA will hire and when.
>  The problems VA faces from the current wars are staggering.
>>From the
> Pentagon and VA's own reported data, we know that in addition to
> some
> 4,400 U.S.  troop fatalities, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
> have been
> responsible for some 86,000 casualties, 37,280 wounded in action
> and
> 48,272 medically evacuated due to injury or illness.  As much of
> 20 percent
> of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans (360,000) may have suffered
> traumatic
> brain injury from IED blasts, according to a DoD estimate issued
> last
> year.  Every day 18 U.S.  veterans attempt suicide, more than
> four times the
> national average.  There are 537,099 Iraq and Afghanistan veteran
> patients
> in the VA system, and thousands more wait as much as a year for
> VA
> treatment.
>  Schoenhard, who recently retired from an administrative career
> in private
> health care, is new to the VA system, which he joined in
> February.  He
> alone knows his purpose in providing administrators with the
> elaborate
> documentation of tricks.  One thing we can be sure of is that VA
> has a
> scandal on its hands.  How it faces it and underlying problems
> could mean
> life or death for hundreds of thousands of veterans from current
> and past
> wars.  According to Sullivan, "another tidal wave" of Vietnam War
> veterans
> with PTSAID and Agent Orange-related problems is flooding into VA
> facilities.  And recent studies on toxic exposure and Gulf War
> illness are
> causing even more veterans to seek VA health care.
>  The revelation of gaming is only one of many scandals plaguing
> VA health
> care.  Botched prostate surgery, substandard suicide prevention,
> reuse of
> un-sanitized medical devices--the list goes on.  Tainted
> colonoscopy
> equipment discovered in 2008 in multiple VA facilities--comwh has
> sickened scores of veterans with HIV and hepatitis--continues to
> be a
> "systemic issue," VA Secretary Eric Shinseki admitted just last
> week.
>  Using dirty equipment is not an "issue" and ignoring sick
> veterans and
> faking documents to hide the fact is not a "game" -- these are
> crimes.  VA
> needs to abandon its alternative virtual universe and dedicate
> its time
> and ingenuity to actual veterans suffering real injuries and
> illness.
>  This week, as we wave our flags, watch the sky explode, and
> sing of
> rockets' glare and America the beautiful, let's not forget the
> ugly
> rockets, bombs and toxins killing, maiming and sickening invaded
> populations and our own young soldiers, who return home to a
> brutal health
> care bureaucracy fixed above all else on its own survival.
>  Nora Eisenberg is the director of the City University of New
> York's
> fellowship program for emerging scholars.  Her short stories,
> essays and
> reviews have appeared in such places as Partisan Review, Village
> Voice,
> the Los Angeles Times and Tikkun.  She is the author of three
> novels.  Her
> most recent novel, When You Come Home (Curbstone, 2009), explores
> the the
> 1991 Gulf War and Gulf War illness.
>  B) 2010 Independent Media Institute.  All rights reserved.
>
>
>
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