Department of Veterans Affairs officials are long on “investigations” and short on taking actions to fix things.
Officials this week began an investigation into VA’s Wisconsin hospital for doling out opiates like “candy” — something that has already been repeatedly investigated, and which ample evidence substantiates.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald said he’s concerned about the problem after the Center for Investigative Reporting exposed it in the media.
But dozens of employees had been telling superiors the same thing for years, and many of them were fired after blowing the whistle.
The VA Inspector General looked into the situation for two years, but never published the report.
When members of Congress from Wisconsin inquired about the situation this year, VA officials failed to tell them that they had just completed an investigation into that same topic.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., wrote in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that VA refused to turn over information about the investigation even to her, and her office was forced to file a Freedom of Information Act request.
The VA facilities’ chief of staff, David Houlihan, himself underscored how often he’d been investigated without anyone putting a stop to it. “I’ve been investigated again and again,” he told CIR, “and they’ve never found anything wrong.”
Though they took no action after whistleblower complaints or the IG investigation, VA temporarily transferred him after the media attention.
Despite being one of the most troubled federal agencies, VA has been operating with an acting inspector general for months, pending a decision from President Obama on a permanent appointee.
David Hughes, a former VA pharmacist, told CIR that VA’s investigations were inept, and that they were “more concerned about if there was an asbestos problem or if you had a Coke can out on your workstation where it might spill on a keyboard than the amount of narcotics passing through.”
Registered nurse Linda Ellinghuysen said the same agency that allowed the problems to fester can’t be trusted to take honest stock of the situation.
“We need the FBI to come in here,” she said.
