VA Watchdog Stuff
cups, hats, shirts
click here to
support the site





Be sure to get all five
VA Watchdog dot Org
RSS feeds --
Daily VA
News Flashes
House CVA
Veterans' News
Senate CVA
Veterans' News
VA Press
Releases
VSO Press
Releases

Download your
free copy of the
2008 VA benefits
handbook here...
 

Printer-Friendly Version

VA WITHHOLDS INFORMATION FROM FORT WAYNE HOSPITAL

REPORT -- The Bush administration will not release the

recommendations or suggestions in a report ordered by Congress.

For background on the Fort Wayne VA and this study, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=fort+wayne&op=ph

Story here... http://www.journalgazette.net/ap
ps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080319/LOCAL12/338688908

Story below:

-------------------------

VA hospital report information withheld

By Sylvia A. Smith
Washington editor

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will not release the recommendations or suggestions in a $530,000 report ordered by Congress to assess whether services at the Fort Wayne Veterans Affairs hospital should be expanded or drastically reduced.

A national commission recommended in 2004 that only outpatient care be offered in Fort Wayne and that area veterans go to Indianapolis for in-patient services. It said closing Fort Wayne’s in-patient services would save $2.1 million a year.

About 160,000 veterans live in the 25 Indiana counties and three Ohio counties served by the hospital. Roughly 30 percent of them are in the VA health care system.

After protests from northeast Indiana veterans and Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, inserted a provision in legislation requiring another study, the VA hired a consulting firm to re-analyze the Lake Avenue facility.

The consultants, Booz Allen Hamilton, submitted the report in September 2007, but the Veterans Administration refused to make it public. Last month The Journal Gazette filed a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act.

Three-fourths of the 78-page report received by the newspaper Wednesday was withheld by VA officials. Of the 21 pages that were released, most had thick black lines through sentences or whole paragraphs.

Even the table of contents was blacked out except for “executive summary, introduction, study methodology and overview” and their page numbers.

The omitted material referred to anything involved in a decision-making process, including opinions, findings and conclusions.

The VA’s Freedom of Information Act officer said no one outside of the agency will ever see a full copy of the report unless a congressional committee with oversight of the VA demands it as part of an investigation.

The parts of the report that were given to The Journal Gazette include facts such as how many veterans live in the hospital’s service area, the projections for the number of veterans and demands on the hospital over the next several years, and how much the heath service cost in 2005.

The Booz Allen Hamilton report notes that the Fort Wayne hospital needed 28 medical/surgical beds in 2005 to provide care to area veterans but that it would need 31 in 2015. The hospital has 26 beds.

The consultants calculated that by 2025, the hospital would need 29 beds because the population of veterans in northeast Indiana will drop.

The report says that the veterans and hospital staff argued that the projected demand for services in the Fort Wayne hospital was artificially low. They said the services provided at the hospital had been cut back because of the 2004 recommendation to close the out-patient care, which made it “difficult to hire and retain staff, resulting in increased referral to the Indianapolis” VA hospital.

Booz Allen Hamilton’s assessment of that analysis was omitted from the report provided to The Journal Gazette.

The report also blacked out the end of the consultant’s observation that the Fort Wayne hospital is “approximately 60 years old and while its critical utilities and technical infrastructure are in better condition than its age might suggest, a site visit revealed” (six lines blacked out.)

In the meantime, last month the VA ordered a new study to focus on the outpatient care the hospital provides.

-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

Don't forget to read all of today's VA News Flashes (click here)

Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage

email Larry

(go back to VA Watchdog dot Org Home Page)

       
Military Medical Malpractice 
Legal Network               

VA Watchdog Stuff
cups, hats, shirts
click here to
support the site