Employees received Bonuses at VA Hospital where Five Veterans Died waiting for Care

The Veterans Affairs Department health care scandal has deepened, with new revelations of incompetent management and misplaced spending priorities, including millions of dollars paid out in bonuses at the very hospitals where services were the worst. 

Recently, now-resigned VA secretary Eric Shinseki tried to bring closure to the scandal by firing the VA undersecretary of health, Dr. Robert Petzel, and filling the position with Dr. Jeffrey Murawsky — the director of VA’s Great Lakes Health Care System in Winchester, Ill. Since 2009, Murawsky had oversight responsibility of the Edward Hines VA Hospital in Cook County, Ill.

But Freedom of Information Act requests by Illinois-based watchdog group Open the Books reveal that the VA spent millions on bonuses during the last three years at Hines. 

Worse, in 2013, only about one-in-four of Hines’ 4,230 employees were those providing the actual primary care: doctors (309) or nurses (about 800), Open the Books found.

Five veterans died waiting for care at Hines. 

As far back as 1999, the VA had found systemic quality-of-care problems at Hines with little done to correct them. A VA study concluded that “Hines has the most inefficient physical plant for inpatient care and the most significant compliance issues with patient privacy.” 

In 2005, a VA study rated Chicago the worst regional office in the country. Now the man in charge at Hines, Murawsky, has been elevated to oversight of the entire VA system.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.