Anne Saker

asaker@enquirer.com

UPDATING to include quotes from Sen. Brown of Ohio, Rep. Miller of Florida:

The Cincinnati VA Medical Center, which has been embroiled in controversy this year over its governance and management, underwent yet another leadership shakeup Tuesday. The hospital’s director, who had been on the job less than a year, was sent to another Veterans Affairs hospital, and a Dayton VA official was named acting director in Cincinnati.

An 11-paragraph news release issued Tuesday afternoon offered only the barest details about the changes. Cincinnati VA spokeswoman Amanda Eisenlohr said VA officials were not available Tuesday to offer more explanation for the realignment.

Glenn Costie, director of the Dayton VA Medical Center, will become acting director in Cincinnati. He brings more than 30 years of experience to the post, having worked at VA hospitals in Chicago; West Haven, Connecticut; Cleveland; Baltimore; and Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

Costie will stay in the job at the Cincinnati VA until a permanent director is hired. The VA announcement said the agency has started nationwide recruitment for the position.

Costie steps in for John A. Gennaro, a Xavier University graduate who arrived in late July at the Cincinnati VA to be director. Tuesday, the VA announced that Gennaro would now be director of the Erie VA Medical Center in Pennsylvania, where Gennaro had worked before as associate director.

The Cincinnati VA is a 248-bed nine-story hospital in Corryville, a satellite facility in Fort Thomas and six clinics in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Nearly 45,000 veterans in the Cincinnati region get medical care through the Cincinnati VA.

Gennaro arrived in Cincinnati as the facility was undergoing federal investigation for whether veterans were delayed in getting care. But almost immediately upon taking the director’s chair, Gennaro sank hip deep into an internal war within the hospital. In September, 34 doctors and other care providers wrote an unsigned letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald, complaining to the former Procter & Gamble CEO about Dr. Barbara Temeck, then the acting chief of staff, or second in command at the hospital.

The people who joined the letter complained that Temeck was demanding changes in the Cincinnati VA that compromised patient care. In February, when the letter became public, the VA demoted Temeck from acting chief of staff to a data-entry job in the basement of the Corryville hospital.

VA officials from Washington have been investigating the letter’s claims, but the review is not complete. Eisenlohr referred questions about the investigation to the VA in Washington.

After her demotion, Temeck, a Georgetown-trained thoracic surgeon and a 35-year VA employee, hired lawyers who say Temeck had been offered up as “a scapegoat” for problems at the Cincinnati VA. They said she was trying to fix a bloated, inefficient system but was blocked by doctors at the hospital.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio announced that he would be visiting the Cincinnati VA on Monday to meet with the new leadership and with the staff.

In a statement, Brown said Gennaro’s move came “after weekly, and at times daily calls between Senator Brown’s office and senior VA leadership in Washington urging additional changes to address the full scope of reported problems in Cincinnati.”

Brown said he also spoke with McDonald many times about the Cincinnati VA’s situation because Brown is concerned “that leadership needed to properly address the culture and environment that allowed reported problems to occur.”

Republican Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said moving Gennaro out of Cincinnati “only raises more questions regarding VA’s handling of the scandal at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center.”