In March 2017, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) commenced an inquiry prompted by a confidential complaint alleging serious deficiencies at the Washington, D.C. Veteran’s Hospital.
What the government inspectors found was so shocking that the OIG took the extraordinary step of releasing a preliminary report only weeks into the investigation.
Now, a year later, the OIG has published a jaw-dropping final report. Released two days ago, the report recites a virtual litany of severe, long-term, operational, administrative, and managerial failures. For example: sick VA patients endured the risks of unnecessary general anesthesia when planned procedures had to be delayed or cancelled at the last minute due to missing surgical instruments or equipment. Processes for sterilizing medical equipment were deemed unreliable, and store-rooms for “sterile” supplies did not meet infection-control sanitation standards. The list of operational deficiencies and safety concerns goes on and on and on … the full report occupies 144 pages and can be read here: www.va.gov/...
All of this in a Washington, D.C. VA hospital that literally sits under the nose of Congress. It’s enough to make one wonder: “who’s been minding the store?”
David Shulkin, Trump’s appointee to be Secretary of the Veterans Administration, was among the officials questioned by the OIG investigators. Prior to being promoted to his present job, Shulkin was VA Undersecretary for Health, and the problems at the Washington D.C. hospital occurred throughout his watch. Per the OIG report, at least three subordinate VA offices that reported to Shulkin while he was Undersecretary had information about the deficiencies. But, when questioned by the OIG, Shulkin pled ignorance and said no one had ever told him anything about problems with medical instruments, equipment, or supplies.
The OIG analysis found that many VA staff tried to shift responsibility elsewhere, and that overall, the situation at the VA reflected an irresponsible “culture of complacency.” Pardon the strong language, but “culture of complacency” is just sanitized bureaucratic-speak for “too many key people just didn’t give a shit, and too many other people didn’t care or didn’t bother to know that those key people didn’t give a shit.”
By the way, this is the same Secretary Shulkin who recently admitted to improper use of taxpayer funds for personal expenses on a trip to Europe and whose Chief of Staff was accused of doctoring an e-mail to make it appear (falsely) that the expenses were actually proper.
Now, before accepting the VA Secretary’s claim of ignorance, a reasonable person might want some further inquiry into exactly what Shulkin should have known, could have known, and did know, and when. After all, when things really screw up on an administrator’s watch, somebody should determine whether the situation was truly unavoidable, or whether there was negligence, indifference, malice, incompetence, corruption, or some combination of these or possibly other shortcomings.
One person whose specific job is to inquire into such matters is East Tennessee First District Congressman Phil Roe, who regularly announces how proud he is to chair the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee. However, when it comes to Shulkin, Roe apparently isn’t proud enough to ask the hard questions. In fact, it seems like he’s barely asked any questions.
So, when there were numerous calls for Shulkin’s resignation following discovery of his misuse of public funds, Roe’s spokesperson blithely told the Washington Post: “Chairman Roe has said both publicly and privately, on multiple occasions, that the secretary and deputy secretary have his full support.” www.washingtonpost.com/…
And now, when the OIG publishes a report detailing terrible things that transpired at the Washington D.C. VA Hospital on Shulkin’s watch, Roe promptly doubles down with his support. In a news story published the same day as the OIG report was released, the congressman implicitly discounts the possibility that Shulkin bears any responsibility for what occurred at the hospital. Instead, Roe spins the release of the OIG report into an opportunity to express gratitude to Shulkin for "being proactive in addressing the problems at the D.C. facility and across the department." [bold emphasis added] www.govexec.com/…
Wait a minute … my head is starting to hurt. Did Roe call Shulkin “proactive?” Yes, he did. Or at least that’s the news quote. Maybe it’s fake news.
But if it’s not fake news, then how exactly could Roe think that Shulkin’s handling of the mess at the Washington, D.C. VA Hospital has been “proactive”?
Total ignorance (Shulkin’s own claim) isn’t compatible with being proactive, unless he set out from the beginning with a plan to be ignorant. Civil rights lawyers have a name for planned ignorance — they call it “willful indifference,” and it’s not a good thing.
If Secretary Shulkin’s claim of ignorance is to be believed, then logically he couldn’t have done anything about the Washington D.C. VA Hospital until after the OIG forced him to look at the awful information discovered during the investigation. At that point, it wouldn’t take much acumen for anyone to realize that something had better be done. But anything Shulkin did under such circumstances would be reactive, not proactive. And it would have been reactive far later than it should have been.
If Shulkin had been proactive, he would have made sure that the VA operated its health system in a manner that prevented the kind of grotesque problems found by the OIG or, at worst, rapidly detected and nipped them in the bud. If Shulkin had been proactive, the VA would have been looking in a mirror, every day, and would have eliminated its “culture of complacency” a long time ago.
Roe has a choice. He can take his job seriously and handle difficult situations in an objective, thoughtful, measured, fact-based and non-partisan way — or he can rush, Trump-like, into the premature embrace of an oversimplified whitewashed narrative focused on expressing loyalty to the President’s nominee, no matter what. Because, in a Trumpist world, as we have all seen many times, reality is flexible, investigation is optional, inconvenient truths can always be replaced by alternative facts, and team loyalty is the most important thing.
As of now, one has to wonder whether Roe’s premature knee-jerk support for the VA Secretary shows that a “culture of complacency” exists not only in the Washington D.C. VA Hospital, but also in the congressman’s own office.
Happily, there is a natural cure for a congressional culture of complacency. Like many good things, it takes time. The cure for this particular problem will get to work this coming November, when the voters of East Tennessee rise up and give our region a big healthy dose of Responsible Change. olsenforcongress.com