Media: No vets died awaiting care, well except that they did

Just in time for the President’s address to the American Legion, the Associated Press reported the news that the Veterans’ Affairs Department Office of the Inspector General couldn’t find any veterans who died while they were waiting for care from the VA hospital according to the ;

Government investigators found no proof that delays in care caused veterans to die at a Phoenix VA hospital, but they found widespread problems that the Veterans Affairs Department is promising to fix.

The AP changed their headline after the president’s speech to the American Legion from this;

To this;

By the way, the president used that little Associated Press headline in his little talk yesterday – that they couldn’t find any dead vets – to prove that he’s getting an undeserved bad rep in the veteran community.

At this point, if the VAOIG told me that water is wet, I wouldn’t believe them. They won’t rid their roles of phonies, like Joe Cryer, they won’t even bounce the list of DOD’s POW/MIA office off of their own lists. Every day, it seems, we read about a new phony who jumped in line ahead of legitimate veterans. Why should we start believing them now?

Apparently, we shouldn’t believe them, or at least we shouldn’t believe the media filter that is protecting them. If you read the Washington Post today, after the President’s speech at the American Legion Convention it says;

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ watchdog confirmed Tuesday that numerous veterans died after receiving poor care in a VA hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., but stopped short of substantiating widely reported allegations that at least 40 veterans died while awaiting care.

The VA inspector general’s office said in a report that it reviewed the records of 3,409 veterans and found 45 cases where patients experienced “unacceptable and troubling lapses” in care. Of those, 28 experienced long delays in care, and six died, the report said. Seventeen other patients experienced care that “deviated from the expected standard independent of delays,” and 14 of them died, the IG found.

On page ii of the executive summary of the report (pdf) it says;

The patient experiences described in this report revealed that access barriers adversely affected the quality of primary and specialty care at the PVAHCS. In February 2014, a whistleblower alleged that 40 veterans died waiting for an appointment. We pursued this allegation, but the whistleblower did not provide us with a list of 40 patient names. From our review of PVAHCS electronic records, we were able to identify 40 patients who died while on the EWL during the period April 2013 through April 2014. However, we conducted a broader review of 3,409 patients identified from multiple sources, including the EWL, various paper wait lists, the OIG Hotline, the HVAC and other Congressional sources, and media reports.

OIG examined the electronic health records (EHRs) and other information for the 3,409 veteran patients, including the 40 patients reflected above in PVAHCS’s records, and identified 28 instances of clinically significant delays in care associated with access to care or patient scheduling. Of these 28 patients, 6 were deceased. In addition, we identified 17 care deficiencies that were unrelated to access or scheduling. Of these 17 patients, 14 were deceased. We also found problems with access to care for patients requiring Urology Services. As a result, Urology Services at PVAHCS will be the subject of a subsequent report. The 45 cases discussed in this report reflect unacceptable and troubling lapses in follow-up, coordination, quality, and continuity of care.

Basically, they found less than forty, but they found more than the zero that the Associated Press (and the President) reported yesterday. By the way, the Army Times says the same thing as the AP said yesterday;

From our buddy, Pete Hegseth, at Concerned Veterans For America;

“Concerned Veterans for America is disappointed, but not surprised, to see the Office of the Inspector General’s report confirm what we already knew about the systemic problems and manipulation of records in the Phoenix VA Health System. Following this scathing report, we hope that VA leadership, including former Phoenix VA Health Care System Director Sharon Helman, will finally be held accountable and fired for the gross mismanagement and falsification of records that the IG’s report confirmed occurred on her watch.

“It is now solely up to President Obama and Secretary McDonald to use the firing authorities recently granted in the VA reform law to make sure that those responsible are held to account and that the VA’s systemic culture of corruption comes to an end. Without that sense of accountability, veterans will continue to be denied the care they have earned. Concerned Veterans for America will continue to monitor the situation long after it has faded from the headlines to make sure that the administration follows through on its promise to our nation’s heroes.”

Category: Veterans' Affairs Department