I promised a follow-up article after Chapter 5; it took me the better part of 48 hours to cool down sufficiently to write coherently to effect an update. On 18 March 2002, I wrote about an appointment with my Primary Care Provider (PCP) being tardy, unprepared, and bureaucratese in supposedly holding a phone appointment with me. 01 April 2022, not an “April Fools Joke,” at 0731 hours, lasting 9 minutes, my PCP called me to get my approval to have me changed from her PACT team to another provider’s team. Apparently, in the highly red taped world of PCPs at the El Paso VAHCS, there must be an hour-long handoff call when a provider initiates a change of PACT team. I have my doubts and smell designed incompetence!
Let me pause here for a moment. I generally need two hours to write an article after conducting research. 18 March 2002, it took a bit longer to draft that one due to the need to blow off steam with some choice words and choke down the urge to beat a few brick walls with my fists. I am generally a very controlled person, and the fact that this PCP was so stunningly incompetent, rude, and HIPAA clueless, I admit I lost my cherub-like demeanor! That the patient advocate was able to get my secure message, upload the comments into the electronic medical record, and contact the provider before the provider had even logged the patient notes, speaks volumes about the ineptitude of the PCP. Worse, in the call on 01 April, the PCP was still on speakerphone, still disregarding HIPAA security, and quoted lines out of context from my message to the patient advocate. Speaking volumes about the processes and procedures of the patient advocate’s office to investigate patient claims without breaching confidentiality. Another topic for another day entirely!
28 March 2022, I received the following from the patient advocates office, quoted completely:
“We have received your secure message addressing your concerns. I will be sending a Patient Advocate Tracking notification with your concerns to our Primacy Care Service for review. They will be contacting you via telephone to discuss your concerns.”
I never heard anything from this mysterious “Primary Care Service” group/team. 01 April 2022 was the first response, and that was from the PCP. Sourcing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG), the PCP is the second most important member of the Patient-Aligned Care Teams (PACT) at the VA; the patient is the essential member and an actively engaged and knowledgeable patient is preferred. I promise the VA-OIG has not even scratched the surface of the problems with recalcitrant, snowflake, and bureaucratic PCPs endangering patient health with the VA. Not my first run-in with an inept PCP; I sincerely hope it is my last!
In returning to the 01 April call, we find another interesting piece of data. The PCP affirmed that abdominal pain could radiate from, say a hernia, to other parts of the abdomen, but this is for a specialist to diagnose, not a Family Practitioner. Get that; the PCP is directly reversing all the published documentation by the VA and the VA-OIG by declaring that a specialist is the only person who can adequately decipher and detail why pain is occurring—putting all the PCPs in the VA Health Administration under the bus as merely button pushers and drug dealers. Then the PCP has the temerity, nay the chutzpah, to suggest a trust deficiency existing between myself and the PCP. Is it any wonder that people are detested, forlorn, melancholy, madder than a wet chicken with a raging case of hemorrhoids with the care they receive from VA healthcare providers?
Again, I repeat, only for emphasis, when any updates arrive on this issue, I will publish them in their entirety to allow the VA the opportunity to rebut, refute, or explain. Like the ongoing saga with VISN 22, the Phoenix VAMC, and being arrested and injured three times by the VA Police, I am not holding my breath and awaiting a logical response. If this were the only problem in the two weeks since the PCP shenanigans, the VA would be in pretty good shape. Alas, we know, dear readers, that the VA is in dire condition, and the elected leaders need to be scrutinizing the VA a LOT more closely than they are.
We begin the latest chapter of VA-OIG reports with yet another physician bilking the government:
“Robert Clay Smith, a Louisiana physician, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, wire fraud, and illegal remunerations (taking kickbacks). According to court documents, the scheme, which ran from 2013 until 2017, involved individuals associated with a medical supply and billing company recruiting Smith to dispense pain creams and patches to his workers’ compensation patients by offering him a split of the profits. The company acted as the billing agent for Smith, handling all the paperwork and submitting the allegedly fraudulent claims to the US Department of Labor, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, and private insurers. In exchange, the company paid Smith 50 to 55 percent of the profits collected from successfully billing insurers, at markups of 15 to 20 times what the medications cost.”
Plus the following:
“Robert Schneiderman of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, admitted to participating in a massive compounded-medication kickback scheme that he and others ran out of a pharmacy in Clifton, New Jersey. Schneiderman pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute. From 2014 through 2016, Schneiderman and his coconspirators used Main Avenue Pharmacy, a mail-order pharmacy with a storefront in New Jersey, to run a fraud and kickback scheme involving compounded drugs like scar creams, pain creams, migraine mediation, and vitamins. Schneiderman was the president of Main Avenue Pharmacy and was a founder and CEO of its corporate parent. Main Avenue Pharmacy received over $34 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs on compounded medications alone. Approximately $8 million of that total was paid by federal payers. Schneiderman himself earned over $400,000 through the course of the scheme. This case was investigated by the VA OIG, FBI, Department of Defense OIG, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and Department of Health and Human Services OIG.”
Don’t forget this one:
“Dr. Harry Doyle, a psychiatrist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his wife, Sonya Doyle, have agreed to pay $3 million to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act. The alleged violations include submitting false billing to the US Department of Labor Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) for psychiatric services that were not provided and upcoding and double-billing patient claims. The Doyles have also agreed to be voluntarily excluded from federal healthcare programs for 25 years as part of the settlement. This is the largest recovery against a single psychiatrist in the history of the OWCP. A multiagency investigation of Dr. Doyle’s practice revealed that from January 2013 through April 2021, the Doyles allegedly billed for services not rendered, some of which occurred when they were not physically present in the United States. This case was investigated by the VA OIG, the Department of Labor OIG, and the United States Postal Service OIG.”
More is coming on this one:
“Ten Texas doctors and a healthcare executive have agreed to pay more than $1.68 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations involving illegal remuneration in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law. According to a multiagency investigation, from 2015 to 2018, the doctors allegedly received thousands of dollars in illegal remuneration from eight management service organizations (MSOs) in exchange for ordering laboratory tests from Rockdale Hospital doing business as Little River Healthcare, True Health Diagnostics LLC, and Boston Heart Diagnostics Corporation. Little River funded the illegal remuneration to the doctors in the form of volume-based commissions paid to independent contractor recruiters, who used the MSOs to pay numerous doctors for their referrals. The MSO payments to the doctors were disguised as investment returns but were based on and offered in exchange for the doctors’ referrals. As part of their settlements, the defendants have agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s investigations of other parties involved in the alleged law violations. To date, 17 doctors and two healthcare executives involved in this scheme have agreed on settlements totaling more than $2.7 million. The civil settlements resulted from a coordinated effort between the VA OIG, Department of Health and Human Services OIG, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas [emphasis mine].”
Elected officials, the next time you are asked about the incredible amounts of fraud in government-provided healthcare and insurance, do not buy the media talking points that the fraud is minimal, contained, or anything but designed incompetence on the part of the bureaucrats to act as a jobs program for investigators! The same investigators who are refused sufficient tools to investigate shenanigans by employees in the Federal Government adequately.
Frankly, all of these cases need the government workers to be held accountable, and the myriad of red tape loopholes CLOSED! I remember an election; I forget who and the exact when, but a significant election plank in the platform was healthcare reform, promising to clean up the swamp and bring accountability to Washington and the government. The public is still waiting, and I know enough of you have run on this topic from both parties to repaper the walls (inside and outside) of the White House.
Yet, even if only outside providers and executives were scheming, the VA might not be in too bad a condition. Except for the employees of the VA, VHA, and VBA, which continue to be caught up in ethics violations at a minimum:
“The VA-OIG conducted an administrative investigation that included a congressional request to look into allegations that Charmain Bogue, former executive director of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Education Service, committed ethical violations arising from her spouse’s consulting work for Veterans Education Success (VES). VES is a nonprofit advocacy group that regularly had business before the Education Service. The allegations also pointed to possible incomplete financial disclosures by Ms. Bogue concerning her spouse’s consulting business. In their work, investigators uncovered evidence of other potential conflicts of interest and related misconduct by Ms. Bogue [emphasis mine].”
VA-OIG finding:
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- Bogue participated in Education Service matters involving VES without considering whether it raised an apparent conflict of interest and acted contrary to the ethics guidance she received from her supervisors.
- Bogue sought résumé feedback from the president of VES to aid in her search for career advancement without considering whether this raised apparent conflict of interest concerns in subsequent VES matters. VES also endorsed Ms. Bogue for presidential nominee positions.
- Bogue provided insufficient detail about her spouse’s business in 2019 and 2020 public financial disclosures; VA ethics attorneys had found them compliant. She remedied the subsequently identified deficiency in her 2021 disclosure.
- The OIG found that Ms. Bogue refused to cooperate fully in the OIG’s investigation by refusing to complete her follow-up interview. Her husband and VES president also refused to participate in OIG interviews, and the OIG lacks testimonial subpoena authority over individuals who are not VA employees. Bogue resigned from VA in January 2022.
UPDATE: 14 April 2022 – Sen. Grassley was hoodwinked by the VA on this issue and The Daily Signal (linked) has more of this report. I covered this before, I repeat only for emphasis, when you are discharged from the VA, you lose your ability to be a “whistle-blower.” As a point of fact, this is how the VA is able to hide a lot of their shenanigans, get rid of the person rocking the boat, invent the paperwork, cover the whole incident over as a “bad-apple” and keep you collective heads down and mouths shut until the VA-OIG investigation concludes. The VA’s ability to abuse whistle-blowers is further compounded by Federal Attorneys who cherry-pick the cases they know they can win. Which further protects the VA’s shenanigans and disheartens and mystifies those who have been wrongly terminated. The Daily Signal reflects this pattern of corruption perfectly citing the records obtained by Empower Oversight.
Some commentators have claimed that blaming elected officials for not scrutinizing or not providing tools to investigate entirely is unduly unfair to the congressional representatives. Really?!?!?! The VA-OIG conducts an investigation, the people being investigated refuse to comply, and the VA-OIG is toothless to enforce a full and complete investigation to initiate Attorney General and FBI investigations and actions to recompense the defrauded taxpayer. Ms. Bogue and the VES have invalidated any trust the taxpayer should have in their respective activities, but this, like so many other investigations into VA employees, will die of apathy before anyone is held accountable. Even though a congressional representative demanded an investigation, nobody is being held liable. Nobody is forced to compensate the defrauded taxpayer, yet the taxpayer is still expected to elect the same old representatives to their jobs. Blaming the congressional representatives (legislative branch) for not scrutinizing the executive branch, one of only two jobs these people have, is somehow unfair? NO!
Remarkably, between the 18 March disaster with the PCP and 01 April’s compounding idiocy, the VA-OIG published an ironically titled investigation report.
“Improved Governance Would Help Patient Advocates Better Manage Veterans’ Healthcare Complaints.”
Imagine that, more designed incompetence negatively impacting the veterans seeking care at a VA medical facility, stating the obvious by the investigators. Who on earth would be responsible for seeing that regulatory agencies had the tools needed to scrutinize and demand corrective action? Calling all elected officials, did you notice that one of the prima facia tools a veteran has to report problems, conveniently called “patient advocates,” does not have the sufficient authority, adequate oversight, and tools to execute their jobs? The VA-OIG reports the following:
“The Patient Advocacy Program helps advance the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) efforts to improve customer service, support veterans’ access to quality care, and provide a mechanism to resolve healthcare issues. Patient advocates document veterans’ concerns, communicate the resolution, provide follow-up and feedback, and identify trends for potential opportunities to improve medical facilities. In FY 2020, VHA tracked about 162,000 serious complaints in its patient advocate tracking systems.”
On a side topic, VA-OIG, how do you define a “significant complaint” and separate it from other types of complaints? Honest question, the information was, to quote my PCP, “remarkably” missing from your investigation report! Would the VA-OIG like to know why so many veterans’ complaints have risen to a “serious” level? You reported the exact problem:
“A complaint is considered resolved when the complainant communicates the outcome, and the record is closed in the tracking system.”
Maybe, the VA-OIG merely overlooked the logic problem, but complaints increase when the solution pushed down the throats of the veterans does not fix the actual situation. Honest question, no sarcasm involved. Is a “serious” complaint one where significant harm or death to the patient has occurred? Is a serious complaint one that breaks federal laws, EMTALA, comes readily to mind?
Having had “solutions” forced down my throat, speaking only for myself, I am thoroughly sick of having the patient advocates bureaucratize my complaint, then fail to act, and then compound the problem by quoting policy to me as a reason to close the complaint, when the VHA never have written policies and procedures! Maybe, you might want to look into the root causes of some of those “closed” complaints and ask root causation questions!
What did the VA-OIG find when they investigated the patient advocates?
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- VHA lacked adequate governance of the Patient Advocacy Program.
- VHA did not effectively issue and implement adequate policy, monitor complaint practices, and provide guidance to medical facility directors responsible for local program management.
- Patient advocates did not always enter complaints into the system.
- Even though complaint records generally appeared to be closed on time, patient advocates did not always document the communication of the outcomes to the complainants.
- The VA-OIG substantiated an inadequate program policy to identify clear expectations and responsibilities.
- The VA-OIG found that they (patient advocates) did not always adhere to the documentation requirements to show full complaint resolution.
- At the local and VISN levels, responsible personnel did not consistently analyze patient advocate tracking system complaints about trends.
Feel free to read the complete abomination of designed incompetence for yourself. Essentially the VA-OIG concluded that the VHA has been burning taxpayer money in a patient advocacy program, and the designed incompetence is so apparent it can be tracked from L2, where the James Webb telescope is located! Worse, you won’t need the James Webb telescope to see the designed incompetence!
Unfortunately, I could have guessed the first three findings without looking. Every VA program is designed so ineptly, reprehensibly led, criminally incompetent, and with such dastardly deceptive doings that fiction writers’ storylines have to be written better to sell books. You cannot make this stupidity up and make a profit. Hollywood would run screaming into the night if they made a true story about the ineptitude found at the VA!
Elected officials, where are you? The VA-OIG presents copies of their findings to you, and I have yet to witness a single one of you holding the VA Leadership criminally responsible for the failures at the VA. Even when the VA is killing hundreds of veterans, the US Congress refuses even to act upset, let alone scrutinize for a change! Remember how many veterans were intentionally killed in Phoenix waiting for treatment? How many VA employees lost their jobs and pensions or were forced in front of a judge for murder? It is a fair question, where are the elected officials in the legislative branch working to end the criminal “fraud, waste, abuse,” and designed incompetence in the executive branch?
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Words fail to describe how much I detest seeing the same abuses week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-over-year. To witness the disaster known colloquially as The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as told from the Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG). Not merely witnessing but also being abused by the VA leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth.
Take a moment, read the full articles reporting these crimes, and ask yourself, have ALL the guilty parties been held accountable before the law, or are some parties noticeably missing? If you reach different conclusions, please note this in the comments, and let’s discuss. Show me your thinking, I want to learn!
While the above are not all the reports from the VA-OIG launching 2022, they present the bulk of the criticisms and reflect the need for greater scrutiny and improved leadership at the VA. More to the point, these represent the danger the American public is in from a runaway government that keeps biggering (with a nod to The Lorax and Dr. Seuss)! The VA is abusing your veteran neighbors, and you are paying for it. Doesn’t this stir in you feelings motivating to action? If not, please ask yourself why. Do veterans deserve to be abused relentlessly? Do you like being complicit in a crime perpetrated by bureaucrats, cheered on by elected officials, and paid for by your tax dollars and the future of your children through forced taxation and out-of-control debt? The choice is yours, I know my choice, and I WILL continue to resist the government atrocities every step of the way!
It is no secret I am on several prescription medications. I take these under strict medical advice, and three of these prescriptions regard mental health improvements. However, my prescription reasons were subtly shifted because Phoenix’s last two primary care providers did not listen to the patient. Since the El Paso primary care physicians appear to be utterly incapable of even attempting to listen, I have now been without a mental health prescription for an entire week. This is called bureaucratic cold-turkey prescription stoppage!
I am a root cause kind of person; why do I bring this up? I have had three primary care providers since arriving in the El Paso VAHCS in May 2021. None of them have gotten any of the medications correct due to a blatant refusal to LISTEN to the patient with the INTENT to understand! Nurses with VA-provided primary care providers are expected to communicate with patients between 24 and 72 hours post any ER visit. Since moving to Las Cruces, I have visited the ER twice and have not spoken to the nurse yet!
Snide, rude, and disrespectful staff, all made possible by, supported through, and legally accepted under federal government fiat. Do you realize that the nurse not doing their job will have any number of valid and acceptable excuses, and these excuses are accepted because of designed intentional incompetence allowed under federal employment laws, regulations, and directives, established by and supported through Congressional oversight? In Disney’s “Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement,” Viscount Mayberry has a line,
When the VA publishes marketing materials claiming they set standards for excellence and lead the industry, I want them to prove their competence and abilities! Right now, their failures scream louder than the voices in their own ears, and they refuse to listen to anyone, and I am not happy! You, the taxpayer, should not accept the performance of ANY government agency, including the entire legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government at the local, county, state, and federal levels, until they correct their behaviors! It is time to end the charade and put paid to this contemptible behavior and abuse!
Why chronicle the VA abuses; because the needs to be held accountable, speak the language, and have tougher skin and broader shoulders than the VA’s normal victims. The VA is slowly learning they can harm me, but they cannot shut me up! I will not stop fighting the VA for humane treatment, honorable service, and dedicated systems. The VA is sick because apathy and inertia were allowed to replace common sense and decency, leadership was replaced with cost accounting and bureaucratic red tape, and human kindness was eradicated and replaced with drones and robots. I know how to make the VA better; I do not have all the answers, but I know how to launch the revolution and begin cleaning the VA, and I will not stop calling upon those responsible for fixing the mess they created!
Let’s admit a truth for certain; COVID has been a farrago of gargantuan size from day 1. In acknowledging this, no blame is being proportioned to the front-line workers in any way, shape, or form. But, the administrators, policymakers, politicians, and government bureaucrats have certainly proved they could unscrew the inscrutable! Worse, the bureaucrats proved that their idiocy was highly contagious, infecting more people than COVID, spreading faster than COVID, and killing more people than COVID. Our proof of this concept arrives from 
Before continuing, we must pause and take a moment to send heartfelt congratulations to two VA Health Care Systems (VAHCS) who passed their comprehensive healthcare inspections (CHIp), if not with flying colors with significant improvement, and are deserving of the highest praise. Would the leaders of the Fort Harrison VAHCS in Montana and the Western Colorado VAHCS in Grand Junction please stand and take a bow. Your improvements, conduct, and capacity to achieve reflect that success is possible with good leadership. Keep up the good work; find ways to improve daily, and may continual success be ever yours!
Why? Why are victims left to rot, the assaulters and victimizers promoted, and the VA as an organization left in the hands of disreputable, dishonest, unethical, and immoral people? Why is the VA a culture of corruption, greed, envy, sloth, and disinterest when the US military is the exact opposite? America is not what is found in the halls of the VA, why has the VA been allowed to become something anathema to the American people?
This week, the final three emails from the VA-OIG reflected a VISN wide comprehensive healthcare inspection (CHIp) conducted virtually, a VAMC/VAHCS CHIp conducted in Spokane, Washington, and a program report on the failures in the Veteran-Directed Care Program. The most interesting finding in the CHIps was how short the leadership teams had worked together, a month, and how many open positions for leaders there were, more than half. Talk about glaring symptoms of leadership failure, were the leadership teams broken up from employee turnover? If so, did the employees retire, or were they retired to avoid criminal convictions? With all the investigations for fraud, as discussed on these pages frequently, I can only guess how leaders churn in a VAMC/VAHCS/VISN.
In looking back, it has been a long time since I wrote two scathing chronicles about the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in a single week. But, I could not allow these Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reports to age any longer in my inbox. With the Fourth of July fast approaching, as you celebrate, please keep in mind what the VA is purposefully doing to the Veterans, Dependents, and Spouses under their care. America would not be here without her military, and military service produces veterans. But, the VA is producing bodies and bureaucracy instead of helping veterans as they are paid and legally charged to do!
Yet, the marketing materials produced by the Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Health Administration, a division of the VA, claims this is “Defining Excellence in Healthcare in the 21st Century.” If you believe that, then you must believe that buffalo wings come from flying buffaloes. Unfortunately, the problems only continue to worsen.
Finally, the VA-OIG has completed a full VISN wide comprehensive healthcare inspection (CHIp) for 
One of the Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reports I wrote about in 2019 was how the Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Benefits Administration (
The manuals, designed and published by the VBA, are inadequate to decide spinal claims consistently. The VBA created these books to be a ready-made excuse for cheating veterans with improperly decided claims on spinal injuries. Why is this such an issue for me; I have been fighting chronic pain in my spine since 2002. I fell multiple times onboard the ship after being pushed by a First-Class Petty Officer while carrying a load of D Cell batteries. I experienced weakness and shortness of breath on the boat, went to medical; none of those records exist anymore. The Chief made Senior Chief and was “encouraged” to retire shortly after I left the ship. After leaving the service, I discovered that the Independent Duty Corpsman, a US Navy Chief, was consistently sinking medical records for the Engineering Department to Davey Jones’ Locker.
Today, 10 May 2010, I had a Compensation and Pension appointment with LHI. I discovered the VBA had edited my claim, and my C-Spine information again was missing from the evaluation. Since my spine was inappropriately decided in 2014, I could not add the C-Spine problems into today’s appointment. I was sent back to the VA to file a supplemental claim, using the 
Worse, all the problems have a root cause in the technology forced upon the medical reviewer. There is an insufficient explanation to describe to a veteran what the VBA is asking for, so the veteran can answer the questions correctly. The person who made my spinal claim originally had been writing VBA claims for 20+ years. She was still disregarded by the VBA because the Veterans Service Representative reviewing the claim could not, or would not, interpret the doctor’s note correctly for an accurate decision. Any fourth-grade biology student can tell you that the T-Spine is different from the L-Spine, and damage in one does not mean damage can be added to the other, and all the damage can be lumped together! Yet, that is precisely the asinine decision I was handed and have been fighting!
As the case for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administrators being the number one problem continues, I wanted to revisit a topic that has been mentioned several times, but not been covered in-depth recently, the scheduling issues at the VA for veterans to obtain an appointment. Back in 2012, the news media went ballistic over veterans dying while waiting to be seen, due to paper wait-lists, cherry-picking veterans to be seen, and employees being encouraged to practice discrimination. I was a patient in the 
I do not believe in coincidences, I just started reporting the VA leadership as being the problem at the VA; the Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) finally appears to be blaming Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) leadership. In my inbox are two VA-OIG reports where the facilities’ leadership is being called out for the detestable behavior they continue to exhibit! In one of the VA-OIG reports, please do not allow the “YUCK!” factor to distract from the problems at hand in the VA Leadership refusing to do the jobs they have been hired to perform!
The leadership at the VISN levels and the individual hospital levels is sick, inadequate, and desperately in need of a complete replacement to end the culture of corruption found inside the VA. When employees record moral distress, this should be an automatic red flag, alerting the VISN leaders poor leadership practices are happening, but the VISN never does anything! Failure of this magnitude would have gotten any non-VA hospital or clinic shuttered and class-action malpractice lawsuits launched. Yet, when the VA gets caught, the media cannot even be bothered to report on the problem in the local news. Maximum endurance has been breached, and these administrator problems need immediate attention from the politicians!
Hence, I will ask you, dear reader, to please share these VA articles far and wide. Action is needed before the next veteran to die unnecessarily is a friend or family member of yours!
On the topic of insane and inexcusable abuse of the VA, the VA-OIG investigated the Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System in California and found a supervisor in an “other than spouse” relationship with a vendor and they used the VA property to improperly conduct business on contracts the supervisor oversaw. These actions are a clear and blatant violation of the Federal Statutes on contracting as a Federal Employee, even if these consenting adults were married, it would remain illegal, unethical, immoral, and inexcusable! Yet, because the supervisor quit during the investigation, the VA-OIG has no power to take any action.
The VA-OIG performed an audit, also referred to as a “data review.” “The data review consisted of a sample of 45 employees and found the employees were paid an estimated $11.6 million for overtime hours for which there was no evidence of claims-related activity in the Fee Basis Claims System in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, representing almost half of the total overtime paid. Significantly, 16 of the 45 employees each received more than $10,000 in overtime for hours during which there was no claims-related activity.” The Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Community Care (OCC) is backlogged and this is leading to late payments to providers, delays in care, and is generally a bad thing. However, the sole reason for the overtime being abused was due to a lack of processes, poor supervision, and training. These are the same three excuses that are used by the Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and is designed incompetence at its most disdainful and egregious level. Worse, this was a sample of employee misconduct on overtime pay. How many more cases are floating in the OCC that were not included in the audit that will pass unresearched because the VA-OIG did not refer the cases for disciplinary recommendations?
The VA-OIG conducted a comprehensive inspection of the Eastern Kansas Health Care System, Kansas, and Missouri. The findings are startling for several reasons, one of which being the deficient lack of leadership leading to poor employee satisfaction, patient care issues, lack of knowledge in managers and supervisors, and minimally knowledgeable about strategic analytics. Essentially, there is a lack of leadership in this healthcare system. The director has been working with a team for 2-months, but the director has been in charge in 2012. Leading to questions about long-term staffing replacement, staff training, building the next generation of leaders, and why this long-term director can brush off the criticisms of leadership failure because the team has only been in place for two months at the time of the inspection.
No controls, no direction, no strategy, no tactical action, losing money, and not even scraping an F in performance. The repetition in these VA-OIG investigations is appalling! Where is the accountability? Where is the responsibility and commitment to the veterans, their dependents, and the taxpayers? Where is the US House of Representatives and Senate in demanding improvement in employee behavior? Talk about a culture of corruption; the VA has corruption in spades, and no one is taking the VA to task and demanding improvement.
DNC-Consulting 