Wednesday, October 11, 2017

VA conceals shoddy care and health workers' mistakes

Via Jonathan


Behind the walls of the nation's oldest veterans’ hospital, the reports were grim.

Medical experts from the Department of Veterans Affairs blamed one botched surgery after another on a lone podiatrist.

They said Thomas Franchini drilled the wrong screw into the bone of one veteran. He severed a critical tendon in another. He cut into patients who didn’t need surgeries at all. Twice, he failed to properly fuse the ankle of a woman, who chose to have her leg amputated rather than endure the pain. 

In 88 cases, the VA concluded, Franchini made mistakes that harmed veterans at the Togus hospital in Maine. The findings reached the highest levels of the agency.

"We found that he was a dangerous surgeon," former hospital surgery chief Robert Sampson said during a deposition in an ongoing federal lawsuit against the VA.

Agency officials didn’t fire Franchini or report him to a national database that tracks problem doctors.

More @ USA Today

4 comments:

  1. Like universities there are VA hospitals in which the employees simply don't care about the customer. When no one cares it is time for the institution to be closed down and let the customer attend an institution of their own choosing at the expense of the government. indyjonesouthere

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    1. They should all be closed with the veterans going to their doctor of choice. The doctors will have to accept the price the government pays, much like they due in CHAMPVA, or provide services to none of them.

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  2. Listening to the local news tonite, WLOS, there are 50,000
    job openings at VA hospital which they are not going to fill.
    Meanwhile, in Afghanistan in which our troops are deployed
    to kill and steal, it is costing American tax payers 14 million
    dollars/minute to be there.

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    1. The VA has some good employees and those who are worthless, much like the civil service. Similar to the age old adage "10% of fishermen catch 90% of the fish."

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