An Amarillo Veterans Affairs physician says dozens of veterans were not properly evaluated.

Those evaluations involve traumatic brain injuries (TBI)

Only four kinds of specialists are allowed to evaluate possible TBI victims.

But, Dr. Roy Morokus says that’s not how the Amarillo VA had been doing them.

In fact, he says he learned this was more than just a problem in Amarillo.

Dr. Morokus was the head of the compensation and pensions (C & P) department at Amarillo’s VA medical center.

He says he noticed that dozens of local veterans had been improperly evaluated for TBI.

Only Physiatrists, Psychiatrists, Neurologists or Neurosurgeons are allowed to evaluate patients for TBI.

“To have a traumatic brain injury done, examination done, and done properly, especially for claims purposes, one has to be one of those kinds of physicians.” Dr. Morokus said. “In addition to that, they have to be specially certified in the compensation and pensions modality.”

In other words they have to know how to take their clinical evaluations and put them in the C&P realm.

Michael Kiefer is the director of the Thomas E. Creek VA medical center. He denies any veterans have been or currently are being diagnosed by unqualified people.

“That wasn’t a requirement before 2012 because we simply didn’t have the science and the history that says they would benefit from having those people take a look at them more closely.” Kiefer said.

Kiefer says the medical field is advancing in area TBI and they constantly change how they diagnose and treat such cases.

He says some local veterans may or may not have been diagnosed with TBI before the VA changed its policy.

“What we were asked to do is go back from 2008 to 2013 and look at a specified number of veterans from the central office to see if there were any that had not had benefit of those four primary diagnosing physicians.” Kiefer said.

Dr. Morokus adds, “It became apparent to somebody at a higher level in the VA that across the country this is not just being done regarding Amarillo, a lot of these traumtic brain injury exams are being done by unqualified people.”

Dr. Morokus says the Arlington office asked how many people were affected at the Amarillo VA.

He claims he identified anywhere from 70 to 137 local veterans.

Kiefer would not confirm that number, but says they are contacting the affected veterans to let them know they can be re-evaluated under the new guidelines.

Dr. Morokus and Kiefer are both veterans. Both retiring as Colonels