Whistleblower: VA Punished Me for Not Falsifying Records

May 19th, 2014

David Schulberg the 3rd

By Nick Coltrain, The Coloradoan

The whistleblower behind the federal investigation of the Fort Collins Veterans Affairs clinic said she was put on two-week unpaid leave for not “cooking the books” when scheduling appointments.

Lisa Lee, a former Navy reservist now on active duty in Hawaii, told the Coloradoan she and another scheduler were transferred from Fort Collins in March 2013 for refusing to hide wait times between desired appointment dates and actual dates. She said the suspension came after she filed an internal grievance about the transfer and scheduling practices.

The VA aims to see veterans within 14 days of desired appointment dates and uses it as a performance measure. It is a contributing factor to administrator bonuses, according to a VA spokesperson. Lee said a spreadsheet detailed which schedulers met the 14-day goal.

Appointments in Fort Collins that fell within the desired date spiked from mid-60 and 70 percentiles to the high 90s two weeks after the transfers, according to a report from the federal Office of the Medical Inspector.

An email from an employee the following June outlined how they were “gaming the system” and noted that “when we exceed the 14 day measure, the front office gets very upset.” Instead of asking when patients wanted their appointments, they indicated when appointments were available. According to the OMI report, that was as long as eight weeks out.

Read the full story at The Coloradoan

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