MOSCOW, April 24 (RIA Novosti) – The Phoenix Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care system maintained a secret waiting list that systematically denied prompt medical care for veterans, leading to the deaths of at least 40 people, CNN reported Thursday.
"The scheme was deliberately put in place to avoid the VA's own internal rules. They developed the secret waiting list," Phoenix physician Dr. Sam Foote was quoted as saying.
According to Foote, who quit after working in the VA for one day, there are two lists of patients: the one that is shared with officials in Washington and the real list, which forced some veterans to wait for an appointment for over a year.
The scheme, designed by the VA managers, was aimed at hiding the fact that around 1,500 sick veterans did not receive medical treatment on time.
Although VA hospitals are required to provide healthcare within 14 to 30 days, the staff was instructed to schedule appointments for the veterans by bypassing the official computer list.
"They enter information into the computer and do a screen capture hard copy printout. They then do not save what was put into the computer so there's no record that you were ever here. That hard copy, if you will, that has the patient demographic information is then taken and placed onto a secret electronic waiting list, and then the data that is on that paper is shredded,” Foote told CNN.
“So the only record that you have ever been there requesting care was on that secret list. And they wouldn't take you off that secret list until you had an appointment time that was less than 14 days so it would give the appearance that they were greatly improving the waiting times, when in fact they were not," he added.
Without receiving timely treatment, dozens of veterans died. Seventy-one-year-old Navy veteran Thomas Breen was rushed to a VA hospital on September 28, 2013 with blood in his urine, but even though his case was marked as urgent, an appointment was not scheduled.
Breen died from bladder cancer on November 30. His family received a call from the hospital only on December 6.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee in Washington has been monitoring cases of delays in healthcare at veterans hospitals across the US and called for a government investigation. Congress has already ordered all records from the Phoenix VA healthcare system.
