A Department of Veterans Affairs whistleblower is arguing officials at a VA hospital in Pennsylvania retaliated against him after he warned superiors about a doctor who appeared to exhibit signs of dementia yet continued to treat patients.
A whistleblower case brought by James DeNofrio, an administrative officer at the James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center in Altoona, Pa., is the subject of the three-day hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial agency that aims to protect federal merit systems.
DeNofrio worked as an administrative officer at the Altoona-based VA hospital and claims he faced retaliation after he and a colleague, Timothy Skarada, raised concerns in 2013 about the doctor who led the hospital’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Services.
According to comments filed by DeNofrio and Skarada with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, both men were denied promotions, threatened with lower performance ratings, and denied overtime and comp time after warning the hospital’s chief of staff that the doctor, Frederick Struthers, began exhibiting confusion and memory issues.
“My position was marginalized to the point that it created the impression that I was irrelevant as an employee,” DeNofrio said during the hearing, according to the Altoona MIrror.
Struthers and DeNofrio had a “father and son” relationship, and DeNofrio initially hesitated to share his concerns about the doctor’s performance.
But DeNofrio said it became clear Struthers’ confusion was growing after he began to forget information like the names of employees and how to use the hospital email system — instances reported to then-hospital Director William Mills and chief of staff Santha Kurian in October 2013.
Struthers began to exhibit more serious signs of memory loss and confusion, including when he advised a patient in pain after a splenectomy that it stemmed from the spleen regenerating.
Struthers also performed a hernia check without gloves, conducted exams without asking for patients’ medical histories, and had trouble locating patient information, a witness told the Merit Systems Protection Board on Tuesday.
In addition to sharing his concerns with Kurian, DeNofrio also spoke with the hospital’s risk manager and Mills.
Struthers, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate.
DeNofrio said his friend was “going through the motions.” The doctor sent a patient who came to the emergency room with double pneumonia home and told the patient’s spouse to do rib manipulations as a chiropractor would, according to the Altoona Mirror.
DeNofrio said the episode nearly led to the patient’s death.
As DeNofrio was sending emails detailing Struthers’ issues, Kurian was allegedly sharing the messages with the doctor, who would get angry, but then forget about them the next day.
“It was like ‘Groundhog Day,'” DeNofrio said in testimony.
But Kurian denied sharing the emails with Struthers, and said Wednesday she feared she would be “run out of my job” by DeNofrio.
Struthers served as chief of the hospital’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service unit until March 2015 and eventually retired.
“Often I’ve been like a leper,” DeNofrio said. “It’s hard to imagine a more hostile environment than the last few years.”
