VA's DC

From USA Today:

"VA staff plea: End 'incompetence' and fix worsening conditions at DC hospital"

Employees at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington are pleading with the new VA secretary to take action as conditions at the facility have continued to deteriorate even after national leaders swept in more than a year ago, removed the hospital director and sent in patient-care experts to help. Infection rates went up instead of down. In veterans’ blood streams. In their urinary tracts. Patient satisfaction went down instead of up. Employee satisfaction tanked. The hospital declined so much that a senior VA health executive put local and regional officials on notice last month that the situation is under investigation and more “leadership changes” could be in store, according to internal documents obtained by USA TODAY. But the group of anonymous employees has little faith in the effort. They wrote to newly minted VA Secretary Robert Wilkie this week asking him to step in and finally fix the hospital that serves tens of thousands of veterans in the nation’s capital. They noted an investigation concluded earlier this year that VA managers at every level – local, regional and national – knew for years about dangerous conditions at the hospital but didn't fix them. The VA inspector general found “a culture of complacency and a sense of futility pervaded offices at multiple levels.” When the results were announced in March, VA officials claimed “significant improvement” had been made, even as key quality indicators continued to deteriorate, including rates of ventilator complications and patient safety scores.      “We ask you, our respected leaders, to stop this coverup and incompetence, to really care and live up to America’s promise to its Heroes,” the employees wrote to Wilkie and other top VA officials. “Enough is enough.” The VA replied in an email Monday, saying the secretary had forwarded their concerns to top VA health officials for consideration. “Thank you for your communication.” Fearing the problems would be swept aside once again rather than fixed, the employees provided a copy of the correspondence to USA TODAY on the condition they not be identified because they fear retaliation for speaking out. VA Press Secretary Curt Cashour declined to answer questions about why the hospital has continued to deteriorate but said VA officials are “taking additional measures to support the facility.” “VA appreciates the employees’ concerns and will look into them right away,” he wrote in a prepared statement. “Veterans deserve only the best when it comes to their health care, and that’s why VA is focusing on improving its facilities in Washington and nationwide.” The Washington VA hospital made national headlines in April 2017 when the agency’s inspector general issued a rare emergency report because conditions at the medical center were putting veteran patients in imminent danger and VA managers who knew about the problems hadn’t fixed them. The operating room was repeatedly running out of critical equipment, including vascular patches to seal blood vessels and ultrasound probes used to map blood flow. The facility had to borrow bone material for knee replacement surgeries. Investigators also found most of two dozen sterile storage areas were dirty at the hospital. Top VA leaders quickly removed the hospital’s director, set up an incident command post and dispatched teams of experts to help the facility. But problems continued.   In June, the inspector general again found sterile storerooms that did not meet infection prevention or cleanliness criteria. In August, hospital staff reported running out of tubing for blood transfusions and oxygen. In September, the facility didn’t have staplers to close incisions for days. In November, sterilization specialists from VA headquarters found stained and rusty medical instruments, bacteria in water used to disinfect them, and the hospital had repeatedly run out of sterilization supplies and had to borrow them from a neighboring private sector hospital, according to an internal report obtained by USA TODAY. In January, the headquarters specialists found nearly a dozen “repeat findings,” including failures in surgical instrument tracking and quality assurance monitoring, another internal report shows. The inspector general’s investigation concluded in March that local, regional and national VA officials had received 10 different reports dating as far back as 2013 about sterilization and supply problems but hadn’t fixed them. “In interviews, leaders frequently abrogated individual responsibility and deflected blame to others,” the investigation report said. VA officials have continued to assert publicly for more than a year that things are being fixed. In May, the top health official at the time, Carolyn Clancy, testified at a congressional hearing that “substantial progress has been made” to address the concerns. But Clancy was the same official who wrote to leaders at the facility last month noting “continued deterioration in overall quality” at the hospital and “significant gaps causing concern.” She singled out increasing rates of avoidable complications, such as bloodstream infections associated with tubes placed in large veins and anti-biotic resistant staph infections. Clancy, who has since moved to a new VA position focused on research and advancement, also pointed to “large deterioration” in the rate of hospitalizations that could have been prevented with better primary care. Cashour, the VA press secretary, said the hospital has stemmed nursing turnover and improved in ratings of specialists, but the lack of other improvements triggered additional oversight from headquarters. He said the investigation could result in the dispatching of more “expert improvement coaches” or a national takeover of the hospital. Cashour said that in general, when VA facilities like the Washington hospital “fail to make rapid substantial progress in their improvement plan, VA leadership will take prompt action, including changing the leadership of the medical center.” 

^ The Federal Government, the VA and the American people continue to let-down our veterans. We have known about the VA's poor and disgusting treatment (or lack thereof) for a long time now and yet we have done little to nothing to right those wrongs and allow the men and women who served us/are serving us to be treated in such a disrespectful and, often-times, inhumane way. The US people need to make the elected politicians do what is right and fix the VA from the top-down IMMEDIATELY! By staying silent everyone allows the failing system to continue to fail those that need it  - our veterans. We asked so much of them in the past and yet do so little for them now in the present. ^

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/02/conditions-washington-va-hospital-worsen-employees-want-help/875909002/