VA Whistleblowers Named Arizonans of the Year
The aftermath of Veterans Affairs whistle-blower revelations truly frames the patient-treatment scandal in its most crystalline form.
It wasn’t just the faked appointments and the delayed treatment that distinguish this bleak story. Just as shocking has been the blowback the retaliation whistle-blowers endured from a vindictive, angry VA administration.
The instinct to retaliate and resist reform at all costs now frames this still-percolating scandal of health care within the VA.
Drs. Sam Foote and Katherine Mitchell exposed the shocking secrets of patients left untreated by the VA hospital in Phoenix. Thousands of them, dozens of whom died while awaiting their first examination at the VA.
For their determination and grit in taking on an enormous, powerful federal bureaucracy on behalf of sick and dying service veterans, Foote and Mitchell are The Arizona Republic’s choices for Arizonans of the Year for 2014.
Foote told his story to us and Congress. It was a conspiracy of silence and subterfuge, he said. And it was “perpetrated by senior Phoenix leaders.” All of what Foote said would be verified by investigators.
He had been troubled by what he saw as a pattern of deceit since at least 2012. Foote documented what he saw: double sets of appointment schedules for vets one that depicted the reality of an overstressed system bleeding overworked doctors and nurses, and another that reflected a fantasy world that, magically, earned bonus cash for administrators.
Foote provided the information to internal VA investigators that as many as 40 vets had died while languishing on the VA hospital’s secret wait-list. He burst the faade of a system that laid claim to huge improvements in quality of care bogus improvements that, as we discovered in the wake of Foote’s revelations, existed on the backs of untreated vets.
Once he retired at the end of 2013, the internal medicine practitioner could escape the full wrath of his employers. Dr. Mitchell, at the time the co-director of emergency care at the Phoenix hospital, could not. And she paid a harsh price.
In a sense, the full story of the VA patient-care scandal did not come to light until Mitchell stepped forward. We knew about the long, exasperating delays in care from Foote. We knew vets had died waiting. What we didn’t know until Mitchell blew the whistle on the system’s chaotic, understaffed emergency care operations was how vindictive the unrepentant VA administration could be.
Soon after coming forward with information that corroborated Foote’s accounts, Mitchell was transferred out of her co-director’s job. Refusing to accept what she saw as clear retaliation, Mitchell filed complaints and, eventually, won the attention of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. In September, Mitchell was among the first employees to earn a settlement in her retribution case against the VA.
Mitchell’s pursuit of justice first, on behalf of untreated, sick veterans, then on her own in the face of the VA bureaucracy’s wrath appears to have brought about real change within the VA, a rare thing. When Mitchell’s settlement was announced, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said:
“At VA, we take whistle-blower complaints seriously and will not tolerate retaliation against those who raise issues which may enable VA to better serve veterans,” said McDonald. “We depend on VA employees and leaders to put the needs of veterans first and honor VA’s core values of ‘integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect and excellence.’ “
Without the courage of whistle-blowers like Foote and Mitchell, the American public would still be under the wholesale delusion that the VA hospital system is run well. We would still believe erroneously that the often-troubled VA had turned the corner on providing prompt, quality patient care.
Without them, we wouldn’t have known. Without them, the falsifying of appointment schedules would continue. Without them, more ill veterans would have languished for months before seeing a VA doctor. Without them, more vets would have died awaiting care.
For their determined efforts on behalf of American service veterans, Drs. Sam Foote and Katherine Mitchell have earned our gratitude. They are, indisputably, Arizonans of the Year.
Tags: Veterans News
