Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The VA's Rich Rewards For Savage Incompetence

by JASmus



And remember, folks: This is what two thirds of Democrats and all three remaining viable presidential candidates in both parties want to inflict on the entire country, to the roaring approval of a third of Republican voters as well:

Rima Nelson disappeared from public view after the St. Louis [Commissariat] of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital she managed potentially exposed 1,800 patients to HIV, was closed twice for serious medical safety issues and ranked dead last in patient satisfaction.

But Nelson....

Wait for it....wait for it....

....wasn’t fired. Her VA superiors hid her literally on the other side of the planet in 2013 at the [commissariat]’s only foreign facility, a seldom-used clinic inside the palatial U.S. Embassy in the Philippines capital city of Manila.

She resides in a government-provided condo and gets the same $160,000 salary she made in St. Louis, which allows her to live like royalty in a country where the average person makes only $2,500 a year. [emphases added]

And just think, ladies and gentlemen - of all these VA horror stories, this is the most "punishment" we've seen meted out to a VA executive.

Otherwise, the St. Louis VA story sounds very, very, shall we say, Cincinnatiesque:

Earlene Johnson, a medical device tech, told Congress she tried to warn management starting in March 2009, but no one listened. Johnson was then fired by the VA in retaliation, Johnson testified....

An inspection had found that dental equipment was “visibly dirty post-sterilization … Staff was not familiar with relevant VHA guidance.” A re-inspection found that some of the same issues “still existed six months later.”

Then in February, 2011, the hospital stopped performing surgeries for more than a month after surgical trays were found to be rusted. Nelson said the [commissariat] had no clear explanation for how it happened.

Another follow-up “determined that routine environment of care (EOC) inspections did not adequately identify and resolve outstanding deficiencies.”

“The EMS cleaning log reflected missed cleanings of the area, and our inspectors’ surgical booties were dirty when they left the area,” inspectors wrote.

“This is one of the issues that has made me madder than anything I’ve ever seen,” Carnahan said, adding that mediocrity “thrives” at the hospital. [emphases added]

OF COURSE "mediocrity thrives" in the VA - it's a G#$%^&*ed government monopoly.  The VA is almost as big an assembly line of death as Planned Parenthood is, only in the latter it's right there in its mission statement.  And VA management is handsomely rewarded for every bloody, dirty, rusty last bit of theirs.

One more time: The VA cannot be "fixed".  It must be blown up, the rubble buried, its grave paved over, salted, jumped up and down on, and ritualistically doused in urine for good measure, and the services it is supposed to be providing outsourced to the private sector, where competition and the private sector will ensure that they are done right the way those who have put everything on the line for our country deserve.

Assuming there still is a private sector - or a country - anymore.  The jury's still out on that question.

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