cheeseheadveteran

The VA has seriously made the news recently in regards to sexual assaults that happen at VA hospitals throughout the United States. The GAO investigation has discovered a culture of denial and deliberate attempts to ignore sexual assaults that occur at VA facilities. This is pretty embarrassing for the VA, and horrendously shocking to victims of sexual assault. I posted a link to an article that explains what is going on, and then I posted the links to the congressional hearings about the VA ignoring sexual assaults. VA IGNORES ASSAULTS: http://www.militarytimes.com/community/opinion/military-va-assaults-editorial-062711/ Preventing Sexual Assaults and Safety Incidents at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Facilities: http://veterans.house.gov/hearing/preventing-sexual-assaults-and-safety-incidents-us-department-veterans-affairs-facilities# Opening Statement By Hon. Ann Marie Buerkle, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Health, and a Representative in Congress from the State of New York: "Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a deeply troubling report entitled "VA Health Care: Actions Needed to Prevent Sexual Assaults and Other Safety Incidents." GAO found that between January 2007 and July 2010, nearly 300 sexual assault incidents, including 67 alleged rapes, were reported to VA police. Many of these alleged crimes were not reported to VA leadership officials or the VA Office of the Inspector General, in direct violation of VA policy and federal regulations. " Prepared Statement of Randall B. Williamson, Director, Health Care, U.S. Government Accountability Office: "What GAO Found" GAO found that many of the nearly 300 sexual assault incidents reported to the VA police were not reported to VA leadership officials and the VA Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Specifically, for the four VISNs GAO spoke with, VISN and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Central Office officials did not receive reports of most sexual assault incidents reported to the VA police. Also, nearly two-thirds of sexual assault incidents involving rape allegations originating in VA facilities were not reported to the VA OIG, as required by VA regulation. GAO identified several factors that may contribute to the underreporting of sexual assault incidents. For example, VHA lacks a consistent sexual assault definition for reporting purposes and clear expectations for incident reporting across its medical facility, VISN, and VHA Central Office levels. Furthermore, VHA Central Office lacks oversight mechanisms to monitor sexual assault incidents reported through the management reporting stream. VA medical facilities GAO visited used a variety of precautions intended to prevent sexual assaults and other safety incidents. However, GAO found some of these measures were deficient, compromising medical facilities' efforts to prevent sexual assaults and other safety incidents. For example, medical facilities used physical security precautions—such as closed-circuit surveillance cameras to actively monitor areas and locks and alarms to secure key areas. These physical precautions were intended to prevent a broad range of safety incidents, including sexual assaults. However, GAO found significant weaknesses in the implementation of these physical security precautions at the five VA medical facilities visited, including poor monitoring of surveillance cameras, alarm system malfunctions, and the failure of alarms to alert both VA police and clinical staff when triggered. Inadequate system configuration and testing procedures contributed to these weaknesses. Further, facility officials at most of the locations GAO visited said the VA police were understaffed. (See table below.) Such weaknesses could lead to delayed response times to incidents and seriously erode VA's efforts to prevent or mitigate sexual assaults and other safety incidents."

Hi there to all my fellow veterans, I’m looking for some help in a scandal going on at a VA Medical Center. I have contacted the VA through on-site VA management and the https://iris.custhelp.com/ website. However, it has now been about 2 weeks since I filed my IRIS complaint and they still haven’t got back with me. They are supposed to contact the veteran within 7 days. And the VA management is now stonewalling me big time and I would like to solicit strategies that I could employ to get the VA to address my complaints and solve what appears to be a VA hospital-wide problem. The following are the series of complaints I have made to the VA: 1. my former VA doctor who was terminated for failure to meet accepted standards of care for veterans which resulted in an adverse event to me and possibly 19 other veterans under his care, when he misdiagnosed me and prescribed me a highly dangerous medication, and then a failure by the VA to provide written notification to me and the rest of the veterans involved about what happened, 2. the privacy violation by several VA doctors and employees when they emailed me my unencrypted private medical information to my personal email account, 3. the privacy violation by the VA Director of Nursing and the VA Privacy Office when they gave me another veteran’s private medical information in a recent FOIA request of mine, 4. the privacy violation by the VA Privacy Office for not writing me a notification as to why I still have not received my Accounting of Disclosures after 90 days of my request, 5. the privacy violation by a VA doctor and the VA Police when they communicated to each other by unencrypted email my private medical information, when there was no imminent or serious threat of harm to myself or others, and then a failure of the VA to notify me that this privacy breach had occurred, 6. the incident when VA management told me to only file a sexual harassment complaint when I made a non-employee complaint about a sexual abuse allegation of being a victim when I was in the hospital, and their subsequent refusal to notify the VA police of my sexual abuse allegation, 7. the incident with the VA Police when I attempted to file a police report of sexual abuse, but was dissuaded by the Lieutenant when he told he would not investigate it and instead gave me a Suspect Form with a Miranda Warning to fill out, 8. and the flagrant falsehood by my VA doctor which resulted in a denial of treatment for me when she claimed that I agreed to seek treatment outside the VA, which I did not agree to, and this falsehood is evident in an email to me about this Fee Basis treatment, and a contradictory progress note she wrote about which clarifies that I did not agree to this removal of treatment. Ok. A little bit about me. I’m a former VA employee who recently graduated nursing school. I wanted to be VA nurse and help other veterans. The sexual abuse allegation reference above occurred during a college nursing preceptorship at this hospital. In addition, I also worked there at the hospital part-time as a program assistant. When I reported to my work boss the sexual abuse incident that occurred to me, she told me to file a sexual harassment complaint. It ended up being dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction. Students in preceptorships do not have any employee rights, thus no ability for redress on sexual harassment complaints. And then when I tried to follow a police complaint, it didn’t go anywhere. I believe my request for Accounting of Disclosures is critical to explaining the privacy violations into my medical records. However, they Privacy Officer is refusing to give me these records. I am presently awaiting my Congressman to respond to my initial request for help. I would like to know if anybody knows of a pro bono attorney in Wisconsin that I can contact for help? OR is there a veterans service organization that can help me? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I thank you all for serving, and God Bless! J