Features: PTSD ABUSES CHALLENGE NEW VA LEADERSHIP
Posted on January 26, 2009 by gordonduff
WEEDING OUT "PTSD FAKERS" POLICY A FRAUD?
WITHOUT "GROUND UP" REFORM AT THE VA, VETS WILL KEEP DYING
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By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
The VA loves tracking its success and patting itself on the back. It also loves stifling open discussion, punishing anyone who speaks up and hiding from Congress and the public what they really do. With our current wars adding to the disaster of aging Vietnam vets who spent decades without proper medical care, the VA, accused by the GAO continually underestimating funding needs, stands ready to hide behind a smoke screen for another administration and continue the "blame game."
The new VA policy with Iraq and Afghanistan War returnees seeking treatment and compensation for PTSD is to aggressively "challenge" patients with accusations of "faking." After literally thousands of suicides by untreated veterans, many waiting months for help that never came and a long history at the VA of purposefully destroying records and discouraging veterans from seeking help, their solution is actually only making things worse.
There are two policies at the VA and two totally different types of employee. One policy helps veterans needing care and directs them to needed services, aids them with records and advises veterans on compensation. This policy exists in the "Alice in Wonderland" world, mostly.
The second policy is to staff VA facilities with a cult of bitter and corrupt staff who look on veterans as social inferiors, fakers and time wasters. The covert policies implemented by these people, a group with power, seniority and endless malice, is to get veterans "out the door" treated, not treated, it just doesn't matter as long as they leave and, preferably, NEVER COME BACK.
DENIAL AND WASTE LEAD TO PATIENT ABUSE
"Contract nursing staff" and new employees at the VA are given a class called C.A.R.E. meant to remind employees not to abuse or dehumanize patients. Long standing problems of emotional abuse of veterans, especially PTSD sufferers, is not addressed, even in the most superficial manner.
Why would professional licensed RNs who are governened by a strict code of ethics and strong licencing oversight in every state require this kind of class? Could it be that the VA is trolling for substandard employees who are being told, perhaps not openly, but told just the same, that veterans just aren't all that important as patients?
Seeing aging and disabled (including hearing impaired) veterans being lectured or berated for not responding to their name being called "in lightning fashion" is a sight I have seen more times than I can count.
BROKEN AND LOVING IT
The "corporate culture" at the VA has a long and shameful record. Comp and Pension physicals from region to region have had results that have varied to the extent that an illness at one office that qualifies for a 10% disability is 100% at another. Many offices, nobody has ever counted how many, routinely destroy documents but no serious effort has been made to stop this systemwide and decades old process.
When the VA discovered the disparity in findings from office to office, they instituted a policy to LOWER national standards to exemplify the worst areas, not the best. This was done thru a program called "Second Signature Certification" which was quickly eliminated after an uproar in Congress and the rumor of hundreds of suicides among veterans slated to have their pensions eliminated.
THE SCHIZOPHRENIC VA
The VA is headed down that same path with PTSD patients now. With two separate policies, one working to help veterans and another one working to hurt them, the schizopherenic VA is up to its old games again. How do you describe an organization that employs the best doctors and nurses in the world, many of whom take great pride in their dedication to America's veterans but allows these same professionals to work in an environment wrought with institutional corruption.
For years doctors at the VA feared diagnosing veterans with PTSD. For years, counselors were prohibited from helping veterans with records or claims. For decades, most information helping veterans seek treatment or compensation was denied them as VA policy, a policy meant to lower costs through systematic deception and stonewalling.
How does a medical organization address its most serious health problem, PTSD, when "weeding out fakers" in truth, can only result in intimidation and abuse causing real PTSD sufferers to "run for the door" and never return?
WILL A "NEW BROOM" FIX A "BULLDOZER PROBLEM?"
Though many rules have changed, the policies and attitudes have become so engrained in the VA system that they will certainly outlive the veterans they have victimized. With no VA Secretary in recent times willing or able to challenge abuses and some, especially during the last 8 years, entirely dedicated to promoting stumbling blocks to veterans, the belief many of us have that things will change is non-existent.
Secretary Shensiki or rather, General Shenseki, a man of great personal courage, is being confronted with an administrative disaster that supercedes any problem with political appointments or incursions by industry lobbyists. The VA is something almost impossible to describe.
How do we tell General Shensiki that he has taken over one of the largest and most corrupt bureaucracies in the world, one more at home in Stalin's Russia than America?
PTSD ABUSES CHALLENGE NEW VA LEADERSHIP
Monday, January 26, 2009
PTSD ABUSES CHALLENGE NEW VA LEADERSHIP
