Vijay Mehta, guest column: 'True Blue' care for veterans?

7 Jun 2008 // Recent headlines have stunned our veterans and put Veterans Affairs officials in a scrambling mode to find a scapegoat.

The chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee in the U.S. Senate has asked the VA’s inspector general to review diagnosis patterns at the facility in Temple.

Norma Perez, the team leader in charge of the post-traumatic stress disorder program at the Olin E. Teague Veterans Center in Temple, recently told staff members by e-mail to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

Given the images the public has seen of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a wonder that, we, non-military citizens, aren’t suffering a little PTSD of our own.

Luckily, a whistle blower made that e-mail public and Perez was in Washington before the committee last week trying to explain it.

Nationwide, VA hospitals are in the midst of “Blue Ribbon Campaign” to improve services and reduce costs. Unfortunately, a group of bureaucrats arbitrarily has set standards to define “Blue Ribbon Care.”

For example, if a clinic’s waiting time is 75 days and administrators decide it should be 30 days or less, the entire organization must scramble to meet that goal — without any additional resources to help an already overwhelmed system.

Somewhere in the midst of this standard-setting, our local VA administrators have forgotten that if the employees do not have adequate resources to do a satisfactory job it is better not to be “blue” than to become “blue” by creative bookkeeping.

No health care professional feels good about providing less than optimal care. We all know that sometimes such care can be time-consuming and, yes, expensive. However, VA officials, in their zeal to meet these criteria, act like Congress sending unfunded mandates to state and local governments.

The Temple hospital has made impressive gains by moving from 125th to 26th in the nation as measured by VA performance measures. However, if that accomplishment comes at the expense of quality care for our veterans it defeats the purpose.

Who directly or indirectly put pressure on this mid-level VA employee to cut corners? Who else in a supervisory capacity knew about this e-mail?

Great credit goes to the VA employee bold enough to forward this e-mail to VoteVets.org and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the media.

It is very easy to be intimidated by the VA system. If frontline workers speak up every time they see veterans being given less than top quality treatment, then regardless of the bureaucratic measurements we will be giving our heroic veterans True Blue Care.

Vijay Mehta is a former surgeon at the Olin E. Teague Veterans Center in Temple.