Med Mal News

In a speech delivered Aug. 9 to the attendees of the Disabled American Veterans 93rd National Convention in Las Vegas, Dept. of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald promised that the agency would address systemic scheduling problems. Those scheduling issues caused delays in patient care and led to undue suffering, worse patient outcomes and even several deaths. Acknowledging that the VA Hospital in Phoenix, AZ, had been singled out as the main villain in the scandal, McDonald noted that Phoenix is not, in reality, the only culprit. “The problems we discovered in Phoenix were systemic,” he said, extending far beyond the Phoenix facility to include the entire VA health care system. Those problems, McDonald explained, included: 1) An “antiquated and cumbersome” scheduling system; 2) Widespread attempts to “game the system” and hide the scheduling problems; 3) Punishment of whistleblowing employees who attempted to correct or expose the scheduling problems; 4) Failure to hold managers accountable for tolerating scheduling problems; and 5) Failure to oversee health care facilities in a way that might have uncovered the scheduling issues.

Two days prior to McDonald's address to the Disabled American Veterans, President Obama signed into law the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014. That legislation will provide the VA with $5 billion to improve infrastructure and to hire physicians and other medical staff. It also allocates $10 billion to fund purchased care for veterans outside of the VA system while the VA works toward gaining the capacity to meet those needs internally.

McDonald told the gathering in Las Vegas that Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson has already implemented changes to address its scheduling problems, including by suspending all senior executive performance awards for fiscal year 2014, eliminating the agency's 14-day access-to-care measure from employee performance plans (in order not to encourage VA employees to misrepresent actual lag times between request for and access to care), sending veterans to medical care providers outside the VA system, increasing clinic office hours and redoubling efforts to recruit new medical care providers.

BIO HERE

Doctor Convicted of Manslaughter for Overprescribing Painkillers

After a four-month trial, Dr. Stan Xuhui Li was convicted in July of two counts of manslaughter, as well as reckless endangerment and criminal sale of a prescription controlled substance, among other things. The jury took six days to deliberate before convicting the doctor on 200 of the 211 charges against him stemming from his prescription of pain killers to 20 people from his Flushing, Queens, NY, office, from which he worked one day per week. His main practice was in New Jersey, where he worked as an anesthesiologist. Perhaps explaining the unusual decision to charge the doctor with manslaughter, rather than just prescribing offenses, New York City's Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said, following the conviction, “My office devoted more than three years and countless resources to this case because we believed that the public needed protection from criminally reckless conduct that purported to be medical treatment but resulted in loss of life, addiction, and harm to patients.” The doctor has been ordered held without bail pending his sentencing this month.

At Convention, VA Secretary Talks Change

In a speech delivered Aug. 9 to the attendees of the Disabled American Veterans 93rd National Convention in Las Vegas, Dept. of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald promised that the agency would address systemic scheduling problems. Those scheduling issues caused delays in patient care and led to undue suffering, worse patient outcomes and even several deaths. Acknowledging that the VA Hospital in Phoenix, AZ, had been singled out as the main villain in the scandal, McDonald noted that Phoenix is not, in reality, the only culprit. “The problems we discovered in Phoenix were systemic,” he said, extending far beyond the Phoenix facility to include the entire VA health care system. Those problems, McDonald explained, included: 1) An “antiquated and cumbersome” scheduling system; 2) Widespread attempts to “game the system” and hide the scheduling problems; 3) Punishment of whistleblowing employees who attempted to correct or expose the scheduling problems; 4) Failure to hold managers accountable for tolerating scheduling problems; and 5) Failure to oversee health care facilities in a way that might have uncovered the scheduling issues.

Two days prior to McDonald's address to the Disabled American Veterans, President Obama signed into law the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014. That legislation will provide the VA with $5 billion to improve infrastructure and to hire physicians and other medical staff. It also allocates $10 billion to fund purchased care for veterans outside of the VA system while the VA works toward gaining the capacity to meet those needs internally.

McDonald told the gathering in Las Vegas that Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson has already implemented changes to address its scheduling problems, including by suspending all senior executive performance awards for fiscal year 2014, eliminating the agency's 14-day access-to-care measure from employee performance plans (in order not to encourage VA employees to misrepresent actual lag times between request for and access to care), sending veterans to medical care providers outside the VA system, increasing clinic office hours and redoubling efforts to recruit new medical care providers.

BIO HERE