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Whistle-blowers sue VA, claim reprisal

After Wilmington, Del., VA Medical Center therapist Michelle Washington decided to testify before Congress last November about treatment delays at her facility, she said she received her first-ever negative performance review and was demoted.

Six civil lawsuits filed by a D.C.-based law firm against the Veterans Affairs Department show that Washington isn’t alone. The Employment Law Group has filed claims on behalf of VA whistle-blowers who allege they were fired or harassed for speaking out about problems affecting patient care.

The suits allege that from Northport, N.Y., to Houston, employees were pressured to cover up mistakes, rush patients through care or practice in dangerous working conditions.

In Northport, a doctor was fired for filing a complaint that the VA Medical Center was running an unauthorized nuclear medical facility. In late November, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel substantiated the allegations, but Dr. Colin Clarke still isn’t back on the job.

“The special counsel herself went out of her way to praise [Clarke’s] courage in a press release,” Employment Law Group attorney David Scher said.

The grievances filed through Scher’s firm date to 2008:

• In Martinsburg, W.Va., pathologist Dr. Ning Shen said she received negative performance reports and was fired because of a personal dispute with her supervisor — a work environment in which the supervisor refused to read Shen’s malignant biopsy reports, forcing them to be sent elsewhere for further review.

• In Houston, nuclear medicine specialist Dr. Shanker Raja alleged he received poor performance evaluations after refusing to provide case summations and imagery for a supervisor’s private website. He also raised concerns that patients received incorrect doses of radiation for imagery tests conducted by that supervisor.

• At VA Medical Center North Texas, emergency room physician Dr. Carolyn Gaston was suspended after she began practicing triage in an understaffed emergency room, seeing critical patients first and making those with nonthreatening illnesses wait. Gaston’s suspension has been overturned.

Scher said such management problems are rampant throughout VA. “Supervisors either don’t know the rules, they don’t follow the rules or they don’t care,” he said.

While none of the cases has been proved harmful to patient care, signed affidavits point to questionable practices that delayed treatment or negatively affected patients.

In Shen’s case, delays with lab results slowed cancer treatment.

In Houston, a patient was notified of accidentally receiving a two-day dose of radiation even though only a one-day test was necessary.

“Does it affect patient care? Absolutely,” said Washington, who is not involved in any of the current lawsuits. “If you are under stress, you might be distracted and you might miss something.”

VA spokesman Josh Taylor said the department could not comment on ongoing litigation.

During a November hearing on management problems at the Miami VA, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., urged VA to monitor its facilities and enforce its regulations

“More than once, VA has come to us and said problems at its facilities are fixed and all is well,” Miller said. “More than once, that has been shown not to be the case.”