Phoenix VA; secret list for doctors kills 40
Several folks have sent us a link to the CNN report about the Phoenix VA’s “secret list” for veterans’ appointments to see doctors.
The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.
For six months, CNN has been reporting on extended delays in health care appointments suffered by veterans across the country and who died while waiting for appointments and care. But the new revelations about the Phoenix VA are perhaps the most disturbing and striking to come to light thus far.
The result is that at least 40 veterans have died during their “wait time” before they could see their doctors.
Apparently, the secret list was a manipulation of the data related to wait times. Your name would remain on the “secret list” if they weren’t able to schedule an appointment for you in less than 14 days (the statutory wait time). If they weren’t able to schedule an appointment for you before that, you just languished on the list. The result was that the hospital appeared to have a exemplary record of meeting the wait time limits. Bureaucratic success! Because that’s all that matters among bureaucrats.
According to [Dr. Sam Foote, a retired VA doctor], the elaborate scheme in Phoenix involved shredding evidence to hide the long list of veterans waiting for appointments and care. Officials at the VA, Foote says, instructed their staff to not actually make doctor’s appointments for veterans within the computer system.
I’m sure their performance won the folks at the Phoenix VA some hefty bonuses, too.
Category: Veteran Health Care, Veterans' Affairs Department
Who is going to jail over this?
*crickets*
PtolemyInEgypt…+1
This lady has mysetriously been jumping from director to director at other VA hospitals….I wonder if she pulled the same crap at those VA hospitals as well.
Your answer:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/24/arizona-va-boss-accused-covering-up-veterans-deaths-linked-to-previous-scandal/
Yes she did at the last two VA’s she was at! and it’s all over the news tonight! She is a scumbag of the first order. Throw her out and prosecute her as a murderer!
I see these types of shenanigans all the time at another Federal agency, one whose performance is also a life-and-death matter (but treated far less seriously by its self-serving, Blue Falconing senior leaders.)
… and with that said, yes, the bitch needs to be prosecuted for 40 counts of negligent homicide. After being crucified before a media-showboating series of Congressional committees, of course.
I did write about this last time. I’m beyond enraged. I don’t think I’ve been this horrified and angry in a long time, and I’ve definitely not used as many obscenities as I did last night on the blog in a while!
This bitch director Helman needs to be put in jail for a long damn time and forced to pay back every bonus she’s ever received, which I’m sure were substantial.
I sincerely hope I never meet this shitslurping, oozing sore on the ass of humanity in person, because I may not be able to control my rage, and her face couldn’t withstand the beating.
I meant to say I wrote about this last night, but I’m still seeing red and not writing clearly.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way a corrupt bureaucracy works. Because the paperwork made her look good, she will be cleared of everything and promoted. It doesn’t matter what actually happened; on paper she looked golden.
What in the blue-eyed world is going on here?
Did we go back to the VA of the 1970s?
What’s next? Will we find patients left to rot from bedsores, hookers paying visits, and rats everywhere?
Why does none of this surprise me?
You mean Walter Reed circa 2004?
Truedat, Flagwaver. Kevin “Urine Man” Kiley for VA secretary.
We are past the point that jail time will solve things. Now we need televised executions.
That’s a hell of a way for this administration to say “thank you” to it’s veterans. I have more respect for hippies than the VA, because at least they’re upfront about their dislike of veterans and the military.
I wonder how many or those bureaucrats that participated are AFGE members? Every one of them should be on the receiving end of a contaminated IV, blood transfusion or injection and be left to suffer afterward!!
This is another perfect example of why Shinseki needs to be fired. Shinseki puts pressure on subordinates to improve numbers and they exceed the stupidity level to try to meet his needs.
Instead of him ensuring this kind of thing doesn’t happen and being a real leader, he’s more concerned about telling Congress “we’re working on it!” than actually fixing anything in the years and years he has been Secretary.
Why does he still have his job? Oh yeah, that’s right, he won’t get fired because he’s from Hawaii like Obama and keeps his lips affixed just the same as all the other incompetent and negligent politik worshipers getting a paycheck from taxpayers.
Obama will fire a guy for talking smack about him on Twitter, but won’t fire people causing Americans to die who deserve better.
Writing about this article on my own FB page I typo’d bureacracy to bureacrazy. It is scary how true that really is isn’t it? Especially in this case:
The VA under Shinseki is Bureaucrazy!
Shredding evidence of bureaucratic failure to comply with the law, instead of sending guns to Mexican drug cartels maybe the giant turd who sits at the justice department could actually take a moment from defending every criminal act of his boss to investigate and prosecute the criminals involved in this taxpayer fraud.
Don’t forget spending $2 million taxpayer dollars to create Gun Tracking technology because you know, law-abiding firearm owners are all criminals who should be tracked if they own a gun, rather than the actual criminals and cartels he’s giving guns to in Mexico.
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/holder-doj-gun-control-efforts-may-include-gun-tracking-bracelets_042014
Not a lawyer, VOV. But I believe intentionally destroying what one knows to be evidence of the violation of law is generally prosecutable as “obstruction of justice”.
Any VA retirees here implicated may also face a second problem. A separate provision of Federal law also revokes the Federal pension of government employees convicted for certain crimes – one of which would be unlawful destruction of government records. If proven, this would also seem to qualify.
If guilty, IMO people involved here need to be nailed to the wall.
I’ve read a lot of crazy shit on this site, ranging from the terribly sad to the highly entertaining, but this is the first topic I’ve seen that makes me climb a clock tower and start shooting mad. I’ll leave it to our resident attorneys to put the right label on this alleged crime, but at a minimum it should include “conspiracy to…” or “accessory before the fact…”
The “recently retired doctor” that CNN talked to about this as well as the staff of the hospital is to blame for this as well. This was taking place during his tenure at the hospital and he not apparently violated the law, but his ethics as well.
“I feel very sorry for the people who work at the Phoenix VA,” said Foote. “They’re all frustrated. They’re all upset. They all wish they could leave ’cause they know what they’re doing is wrong.
“But they have families, they have mortgages and if they speak out or say anything to anybody about it, they will be fired and they know that.”
So the people in charge sold out the vets for their own interests and the people working in the hospital did the same thing.
Either you are a moral person or you are not.
So our employees did wrong, knowing that what they were doing was wrong but they continued to do it anyway? That is the very definition of evil, is it not?
Systemic evil in government. Fire them all. Immediately.
Under the Bush administration, whistle blowers were seen in the media as patriots who only have the best interest of the veteran at heart. This was how the substandard conditions at Walter Reed were uncovered.
Whistle blowers under the Obama administration are presented by the media as racist lying shitsacks because who would dare to criticize anything that goes on under Obama’s watch. Meanwhile, vets die.
And it is about to get worse. The war will soon be over and the troops will no longer be good for photo ops or cheap applause so fuck em’. Soldiers and dogs, stay off the lawn.
Sorry, do I sound cynical enough?
Not to me, I feel exactly the same as you do. Once the War is officially declared over, we Vets will be cast aside by the media and pols like an empty butane lighter.
Don’t forget that this is the same VA that was rubber-stamping Vets with 10% non-service connected to clear the rolls so 0bama could crow about clearing the backlog set by the evil Bush.
One of my buddies that lost a leg got the same designation as me, 10% non-service connected…
Cynical? Maybe. Honest? Most definitely. Any reasonable, rational person can’t help but be cynical because of all the garbage that’s gone on in the current administration.
Looks like John Cornyn is calling for emergency hearings to investigate this. How about an emergency rope+tree session for that Helman cunt?
Not until she gets waterboarded until she grows gills. After we learn all she knows, get the rope.
These are enemy combatants and should be treated as such. What a disgrace.
I hope Sharon Helman is fired, prosecuted and does federal time for this. She is one of Shinseki’s henchmen, moved from VA facility to facility for bad performance instead of being canned the first time. Then Shinseki should be fired and prosecuted as an accessory to Helman’s crimes. This is “shameful”. A word which has fit well during the entire Obama Administration and all its members and appointees from the Oval Office down.
And people wonder why I’ve never been to a VA hospital, and never will. . . . . . .
As for Ms Helman, I think there should be a bounty put out on her. She should be made to feel the fear for her life, to be constantly looking over her shoulder. To quote the creed, “One shot. One kill. My choice.”
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