VA to look into overmedication reports at Tomah center

From an AP Report in the San Francisco Chronicle

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is launching an investigation into reports of overmedication and retaliatory management practices at the VA Medical Center in Tomah, the agency said Thursday.

Veterans Health Administration specialists plan to visit the western Wisconsin facility within two weeks to review medication prescription practices, the federal agency said in a statement Thursday afternoon. They also plan to send representatives from the Office of Accountability Review to look into allegations of retaliatory behavior.

"My sense is that this isn't just unique to Tomah," U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat whose district includes Tomah. "We have a system-wide issue that needs to be addressed when it comes to pain management with our veterans."

Kind and other Wisconsin lawmakers had sent requests to Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald this week seeking an investigation

Tomah VA spokesman Scott Farley said in a statement the medical center will fully cooperate with the investigation.

A recent story from The Center for Investigative Reporting noted the number of opiates prescribed at the Tomah VA had more than quintupled between 2004 and 2012, even as the number of veterans seeking treatment there has declined. Health care professionals have complained about the medical center's practices for several years.

Here is more info from The Center for Investigative Reporting Looks like the main culprite is, of course, another damn psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan

Politicians from both parties and government bureaucrats are rushing to look into allegations of rampant overmedication, retaliatory management practices and preventable overdose deaths at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, Wisconsin, that The Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last week.

In the story’s wake, the VA has begun “actively reviewing allegations of retaliatory behavior and overmedication at the Tomah VA Medical Center,” said agency spokesman James Hutton. He said the facility’s chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, has been temporarily reassigned to the VA regional office while an internal investigation takes place.

But the problems disclosed should not have surprised politicians or federal officials: Health care professionals at the hospital have complained for at least five years about Houlihan’s prescription practices and his retaliatory management style – filing numerous reports with those in charge of oversight.

“It’s about time,” said Robin Weeth, a former social worker at the hospital who wrote to the VA inspector general in 2012 with a long list of allegations, including that “veterans are overmedicated and have been driving while impaired, fallen asleep while smoking and set themselves on fire.”

Today, Weeth reports that he never heard back from the inspector general.

The CIR story reported that the number of opiates prescribed at the Tomah VA had more than quintupled between 2004 and 2012, even as the number of veterans seeking care at the hospital declined. It included details of the August death of a 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran, who overdosed while in the hospital’s inpatient psychiatric ward.

[...]

The VA inspector general had closed an investigation into the Tomah VA before Baldwin even got in touch, in March 2014. The inspector general’s report noted that Houlihan’s narcotic prescriptions were “at considerable variance compared to most opioid prescribers” and “raised potentially serious concerns” that should be brought to the attention of the federal agency’s leadership. But the report suggested no punishment.

Weeth said he believed that Jason Simcakoski, the 35-year-old former Marine who fatally overdosed in the Tomah VA psychiatric ward in August, still would be alive today if the inspector general had come down harder on Houlihan.

[...]

Much more information at the links