Veterans Affairs whistle-blowers blast new agency watchdog

Donovan Slack | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Current and former Veterans Affairs employees who blew the whistle on poor health care at VA facilities came face-to-face with the agency’s new chief watchdog for the first time at a Senate hearing Thursday.

The whistle-blowers were not impressed.

“I was incredibly disappointed to the point of being horrified,” said Dr. Katherine Mitchell, whose actions exposing long patient wait times at the Phoenix VA last year led to the resignation of former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

VA Deputy Inspector General Linda Halliday took over the watchdog post July 6 from Richard Griffin, who abruptly retired after whistle-blowers accused him of conducting cursory investigations and of targeting them instead of the problems they uncovered.

Halliday told members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the VA Thursday that she is requiring more training for her staff on protecting whistle-blowers, but she did not apologize or admit to past mistakes. Instead, she suggested the whistle-blowers were wrong.

“Although whistle-blowers’ perceptions are directly related to their complaint, at times, they are not in a position to know all the facts, or they overemphasize the(ir) viewpoint,” Halliday said.

In addition, she suggested that when investigators from her office launched probes of whistle-blowers, they were “making sure that all the bases are covered.”

Miller and other whistle-blowers at the hearing had hoped for more.

“I know full well that there was no misunderstanding in my investigation,” said Shea Wilkes, a VA social worker in Shreveport, La., whom the inspector general investigated after Wilkes disclosed problems with patient wait lists.

Miller said the testimony from VA officials amounted to “political rhetoric and failure to acknowledge their deficiencies.”

“And if they don’t recognize they have a problem, they’re not going to be able to fix it,” she said.

Such comments suggest Halliday is off to a bumpy start leading an office responsible under federal law with rooting out fraud and mismanagement at the VA.

Griffin had been under fire for months after issuing a report last fall on manipulation of wait lists in Phoenix that said the misconduct wasn’t necessarily behind any patients’ deaths. He also was criticized for closing more than 140 investigations into veterans’ health care since 2006 without releasing findings to the public. He released them after USA TODAY reported on their existence earlier this year.

Those probes included one completed in March 2014 that found excessive opiate prescription rates in Tomah, Wis. Five months later, 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski died from mixed drug toxicity as an inpatient at Tomah, just days after doctors agreed to add another opiate to the 14 drugs he was already prescribed.

Ryan Honl, a former Tomah employee who blew the whistle on problems there last fall, said he also was disappointed with Halliday’s testimony Thursday.

“The president needs to nominate a permanent and independent VA IG confirmed by the Senate that comes in with a hammer to that office before there is any hope whatsoever of change,” he said. “I see no evidence of that happening.”

In its first official action, a whistle-blowers’ group called VA Truth Tellers wrote to President Obama earlier this month asking him to fire Griffin. The group includes more than 40 whistle-blowers from VA medical facilities in more than a dozen states — including Arizona, Alabama, Delaware and Louisiana — that provide care to more than 650,000 veterans annually.

The group wrote the letter after Griffin issued a “white paper” defending his office’s investigation in Tomah and suggesting that one whistle-blower who committed suicide was a drug dealer and another was a subpar employee.

A spokeswoman for Halliday declined to say this week if Halliday would have done anything differently, if she stands behind the white paper or whether she will release findings of all investigations in the future.

“Mrs. Halliday is looking to move the organization forward,” Catherine Gromek said.

She said Halliday is working with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as it investigates what happened in Tomah.