Employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) destroyed
veterans’ medical files in a systematic attempt to eliminate backlogged
veteran medical exam requests, a former VA employee told The Daily
Caller.
Audio of an internal VA meeting obtained by TheDC confirms that VA
officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam
requests.
“The committee was called System Redesign and the purpose of the
meeting was to figure out ways to correct the department’s efficiency.
And one of the issues at the time was the backlog,” Oliver Mitchell, a
Marine veteran and former patient services assistant in the VA Greater
Los Angeles Medical Center, told TheDC.
“We just didn’t have the resources to conduct all of those exams.
Basically we would get about 3,000 requests a month for [medical] exams,
but in a 30-day period we only had the resources to do about 800. That
rolls over to the next month and creates a backlog,” Mitchell
said. ”It’s a numbers thing. The waiting list counts against the
hospitals efficiency. The longer the veteran waits for an exam that
counts against the hospital as far as productivity is concerned.”
By 2008, some patients were “waiting six to nine months for an exam”
and VA “didn’t know how to address the issue,” Mitchell said.
VA Greater Los Angeles Radiology department chief Dr. Suzie El-Saden
initiated an “ongoing discussion in the department” to cancel exam
requests and destroy veterans’ medical files so that no record of the
exam requests would exist, thus reducing the backlog, Mitchell said.
Audio from a November 2008 meeting obtained by TheDC depicts VA
Greater Los Angeles officials plotting to cancel backlogged exam
requests.
“I’m still canceling orders from 2001,” said a male official in the meeting.
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