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"NO" VOTE URGED ON KUSSMAN NOMINATION FOR
HEALTH
UNDERSECRETARY -- Senate Vets' Committee must
consider
Dr. Michael Kussman's record of deceit and
inaction.
Dr. Michael Kussman
VA's Acting Undersecretary for Health
Story below:
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This is a simple story.
If Dr. Michael Kussman is confirmed as
Undersecretary for Health at the VA (he now holds the Acting position),
we will have more of the same when it comes to VA healthcare.
Do you want more of the same?
Please call or email the Members of the Senate Committee on Veterans'
Affairs...and let them know that Kussman must not be confirmed.
Here are the phone numbers ... Democratic Staff
(202) 224-9126 ... Republican Staff (202) 224-2074.
And, here is the link to the Members page where
you will be able to pick a Member to contact...
http://www.veterans.senate.gov/
index.cfm?FuseAction=
About.CommitteeMembers
The Senate Committee meets this Wednesday, May
16 and they will be considering the Kussman nomination.
More of the same is NOT acceptable!
Kussman's record of deceit and inaction cannot
be allowed to continue.
Below are just a few of the reasons why:
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From story here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfAPR07/nf041407-1.htm
At the same time, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois
referred to the Salon article in a letter to President Bush asking that
he direct Nicholson to release all Seamless Transition Task Force
documents, so that the Veterans' Affairs Committee could assess "what
actions VA leaders took in 2004 to work with the DOD to streamline
portions of the bureaucracy and assist servicemembers." The presidential
candidate also linked his questions about the focus groups to the
pending Senate confirmation of a VA official, Dr. Michael Kussman, who
has been nominated by Bush to be undersecretary for health at the
Department of Veterans Affairs.
Kussman, a retired brigadier general and former commander of Walter
Reed, had served as the co-chairman of a task force looking at the
coordination between the VA and the Department of Defense. In that role,
Kussman acknowledged Thursday that he received the 2004 summary of the
focus groups. The report stated flatly that soldiers receiving care at
Walter Reed were "frustrated, confused, sometimes angry."
In his letter to Bush, Obama expressed "serious concern" about Kussman's
nomination. "If the servicemembers' comments in the focus group report
were conveyed to top VA leaders as reported by Salon," Obama wrote,
"then the question is why Dr. Kussman did not act more aggressively with
the Defense Department to address these serious issues."
Murray asked both Nicholson and Kussman what they did, if anything, to
respond to the 2004 focus groups. Nicholson explained that he was not VA
secretary at that time and referred all questions to Kussman, who is
currently the principal deputy undersecretary for health at the
department.
Kussman twice belittled the focus groups, saying that such a "small
sample" of veterans might not be reliable. He also told Murray that the
task force that had commissioned the focus groups was concerned only
with the VA side of the "seamless transition" with the Defense
Department. (Walter Reed is operated by the DOD, though VA officials
work there to help veterans prepare for longer-term care and benefits
they are likely to receive from that agency.) "It was geared to look at
what the VA was doing over at Walter Reed and determining whether we
were accomplishing our mission," Kussman contended. "It was not directed
to what DOD was doing."
The 2004 focus group report, however, dealt with both sides of the
bureaucratic equation. The document noted that soldiers were "confused
about VA's processes and even more confused about how VA's process
meshed in with Walter Reed's processes."
Asked how he responded to the 2004 warnings, Kussman said that the VA
put together a "very thorough action plan" to make sure that any
problems at Walter Reed were fixed. He also testified that Defense
Department officials received the summary of the focus groups. "There
were representatives of DOD there on the committee," Kussman said. "The
report went to all the members of the committee."
Kussman did not identify the Defense Department officials. That
vagueness about what happened at DOD troubles Paul Sullivan, who until
last year was a project manager at the VA in charge of data on returning
veterans. "I want to see a paper trail. Did that DOD person share it
with Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld?" Sullivan asked. "And did anyone share
this with the White House? Because the president was going to Walter
Reed for photo ops."
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From story here...
http://vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfMAY07/nf051107-4.htm
On key issues of access, satisfaction and
quality of care, however, other data contradict the agency's statements.
Consider how returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder - a
major ailment to emerge from the war in Iraq - are cared for. The VA's
top health official, Dr. Michael Kussman, was asked in March about the
agency's resources for PTSD. He said the VA had boosted PTSD treatment
teams in its facilities.
"There are over 200 of them," he told a congressional subcommittee. He
indicated that they were in all of the agency's roughly 155 hospitals.
When McClatchy asked for more detail, the VA said that about 40
hospitals didn't have the specialized units known as "PTSD clinical
teams." Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate and
experts within the VA have encouraged the agency to put those teams into
every hospital.
Even considering that other PTSD programs are available, there are about
30 hospitals with neither PTSD teams nor any other kind of specialized
PTSD programs, although all hospitals have at least one person who
specializes in the ailment, VA records show.
The VA stood by Kussman's statement. He wasn't referring to a specific
type of team, officials at the agency said, but to the fact that a
collection of medical professionals will tend every veteran, whether or
not his or her hospital has a PTSD clinical team.
Experts inside and outside the VA point to studies showing the agency
does a good job, particularly with preventive care, and that it compares
favorably with the private sector. While that may be true, McClatchy
also found top VA officials buffing up those respectable results in ways
that the evidence doesn't support.
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And, more from the same story................
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When he touted the VA's quality before a Senate
committee in February, Nicholson's first bit of evidence was a customer
satisfaction survey.
VA satisfaction ratings, he testified, were "10 points higher than the
rating for inpatient care provided by the private-sector health-care
industry. VA's rating of 82 for outpatient care was 8 points better than
the private sector."
Kussman testified the same thing to a House committee.
But a review of data from the University of Michigan's American Customer
Satisfaction Index shows that Nicholson and Kussman compared the VA's
inpatient and outpatient scores to private hospitals' TOTAL score. The
total score combines three surveys: inpatient, outpatient and emergency
room. The VA doesn't do an emergency room survey, and that's what drags
the private-sector numbers down.
"The ER is a far less satisfying experience compared to inpatient and
outpatient services," said David VanAmburg, who directs the annual
survey. Comparing the VA with the private sector's overall score "is not
necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison," he said.
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Larry Scott --
