Posted on 01/12/2015 10:41:11 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah hand out so many narcotic painkillers that some veterans have taken to calling the place "Candy Land."
They call the hospital's chief of staff, psychiatrist David Houlihan, the "Candy Man."
Current and former hospital staff members describe patients who show up to appointments stoned on painkillers and muscle relaxants, doze off and drool during therapy sessions, and burn themselves with cigarettes. They told The Center for Investigative Reporting that Houlihan himself "doped up" or "zombified" their patients and that workers who raised questions have been punished.
Data obtained by CIR shows the number of opiate prescriptions at the Tomah VA more than quintupled from 2004, the year before Houlihan became chief of staff of the hospital, to 2012, even as the number of veterans seeking care at the hospital declined. In August, a 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran died of an overdose in the inpatient psychiatric ward.
"It's a system that's gone completely haywire," said Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who in October resigned from his position as a secretary in the hospital's mental health clinic after two months, filing a federal whistle-blower complaint on his way out.
The problems at this rural medical center underscore the difficulty the VA is having maintaining standards of quality patient care, even after a national scandal forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign in May.
The exponential growth in the use of narcotics transformed the Tomah VA from a conservative prescriber of painkillers to one typical of runaway opiate prescription practices throughout the VA health care system.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
Wisconsin VA accused of over prescribing pills.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
I guess they won’t complain too much when they’re all doped-up.
“They call the hospital’s chief of staff, psychiatrist David Houlihan, the “Candy Man.”, a “psychiatrist” it figures.
I notice they did not give a street address for this hospital...
Sounds like Obamacare has invaded the VA.
In this case, I do not think it is "the system". I think it is more than likely a single irresponsible, uncaring, hospital chief of staff.
Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it with dew
Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two
The Candy Man
The Candy Man can
The Candy Man can ‘cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
Who can take a rainbow
Wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun and make strawberry-lemon pie
The Candy Man
The Candy Man can
The Candy Man can ‘cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
Who can take tomorrow
Dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
The Candy Man
The Candy Man can
The Candy Man can ‘cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
And the world tastes good ‘cause the Candy Man thinks it should...
Do you have a correlation of that data to the number of patients at that VA Hospital?
and??
You don’t have to take them......
Is this why I cannot get them?
Is this why I get treated like a criminal if I’m looking for some pain pills after having twisted my ankle and it swells like a football.
“Data obtained by CIR shows the number of opiate prescriptions at the Tomah VA more than quintupled from 2004”, What data? what stats, how much has their patient population increased. what are the nature of the injuries for the scripts. Jesus lord a little info would be nice b4 someone comes out with this info... to further the VA killing our own meme.
In Florida you can walk into your doctor’s office with both arms recently amputated and still spurting blood, and the response will be sorry, nothing can be done.
There are signs posted on the partition that if you are here trying to obtain opitates, benzos and such you will not get them.
However, if you go to the emergency room and are admitted with any sort of serious condition, they will give you medicines along those lines without hesitation.
It just seems like doctors are not willing to write out patient prescriptions at all here.
This is easy to believe-MrT5, who was retired Army worked at the VA as a benefits counselor until his untimely death-which had nothing to do with the VA-he came home with stories of zombified vets all the time. He said some of them came to his office carrying plastic grocery bags with as many as a dozen bottles of prescribed drugs, and that painkillers and psychotropic meds dominated.
He sent most of them to see the chief pharmacist, because the MD’s had not explained any of the interactions or side effects of those drugs to them, and he had to walk some of them over there because they were so zoned they didn’t know whether they were afoot or on horseback. The powers that be just wanted them to shut up and either die or go away, I guess-nice way to treat our vets, ass****s...
“After extensive news coverage of the VA’s national opiate epidemic, the agency vowed to limit prescriptions and offer alternative pain treatment. The number of veterans on VA-prescribed opiates has declined by 6% over the last year.”
Look - money was needed to keep terrorists at GITMO in the best of health ... That matters because when they’re all released they need to be strong enough to kill Americans.
What other reason could there be?
Tomah is not at all that big. I’ve been there several times. A person probably wouldn’t have too much problem finding the hospital.
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