Posted on 05/05/2017 12:22:33 PM PDT by digger48
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — More than $1 million worth of medical equipment has been declared lost from the Indianapolis VA Roudebush Medical Center in recent years, an I-Team 8 investigation has uncovered.
At best, VA officials concede that the losses are small in terms of the inventory’s size, but may indicate poor record-keeping. At worst, the records show a systemic pattern of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of items that go missing each year at the Indianapolis VA.
What’s more, I-Team 8 discovered that four years after the VA inked a massive $543 million contract to install tracking devices on these items – hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of items still go missing each year. And the technology has been implemented in only about a third of 152 VA medical centers nationwide.
Some of the items – like a $28,000 surgical drill or $22,000 worth of patient lifts — have vanished without explanation. Other items, like smaller hand-held medical devices, may have been stolen, documents show.
In one inventory record, obtained by I-Team 8 under the federal Freedom of Information Act, a VA survey official writes: “another varying problem is that some items are easily able to be put into staff pockets due to the size and the equipment leaves the facility and does not return.”
Other records show “communication is extremely poor” between two VA campuses in northern Indiana which they suspect leads to more items being lost.
“As a patient at Roudebush Hospital, as a veteran, it’s frustrating to hear,” said John Crosby, a spokesman for the American Legion. The veterans’ advocacy group is based here in Indianapolis. “Any mismanagement is a concern. $1 million dollars. It’s a large number. As a veteran, it’s disappointing. I’m a disabled veteran myself. That’s disappointing.”
I-Team 8’s review of three years’ worth of inventory records from the Indianapolis VA found that – between 2014 and 2016 – the Indianapolis VA lost more than $1.5 million worth of items. Those same records show about $520,000 worth of medical supplies and equipment were later discovered upon additional searches. That leaves the total amount of missing equipment over that time period at more than $992,000.
Officials with the Indianapolis VA refused to be interviewed on camera, but did release a statement saying:
With assets in excess of $124M, our ongoing inventory indicates less than one percent falls into the misplaced category. This does not imply a perfect record or apathetic concern; items are lost, missing and not found. Though we regret every missing item, we continuously strive to improve our asset management program including the recent implementation of the Maximo asset management system just this month. This culture of constant improvement serves the best interest of Veterans and taxpayers and anything we can do to improve our ability to serve Veterans is worth our time and energy.
Jodi Cokl, the VISN 10 Chief Logistics Officer, told I-Team 8 by phone last week the lost items represent less than one percent of the Indianapolis’ VA’s inventory.
But veterans interviewed by I-Team 8, including Robert Szramoski of Anderson, Ind., said that the VA’s explanation falls short of expectations.
“There is no reason this should be happening with today’s technology, not at all,” Szramoski said. “It just boggles the mind.”
The VA’s $543 million plan to address it falls behind
In February of 2013, the VA inked a massive $543 million contract to provide real-time location systems or – RTLS – in an effort to help improve asset management and help curb the number of items being reported lost at all 152 VA medical centers nationwide.
But to date, the technology – that includes placing tracking devices on medical supplies and equipment – has only been installed in about a third of the VA’s medical centers in the U.S., VA officials in Washington tell I-Team 8.
Type of item that went missing at VA. (WISH photo) A 2013 news release from the VA’s subcontractor – Intelligent Insites – notes at the time that “initial case uses will include asset management, cath lab supply management, sterile processing workflow and automated temperature monitoring.” But four years later, less than 10 percent of the inventory at the Indianapolis VA has been equipped with tracking devices that can send out a signal pinging their exact location. Roughly 70 percent of the items at the VA Roudebush Medical Center have been given passive tags that allow for VA technicians to scan for them individually or in groups, according to Kimberly Brayley, the VA’s Program Director for the RTLS technology.
VA officials in Washington could not explain why the technology has been not been fully implemented four years after inking that $543 million contract in 2013. Both Brayley and Cokl said that the implementation is still underway but that real-time tracking was not fully operational in every medical center.
Phil Shealey, the assistant director at the VA’s Northern Indiana Health Care System, agreed to talk to us about how RTLS technology works at his two campuses in Fort Wayne and Marion.
Like Indianapolis, Shealey says the losses at his campus represent less than one percent of his $46 million inventory. Still, he agrees he’d like the number of lost or stolen items to shrink.
“We’d like it to be zero,” he said.
When it comes to larger items, especially older medical equipment or devices that appear to be beyond their natural shelf life, Shealey said the lost or misplaced item is likely to do an administrative error.
“Something fell through the cracks,” he said.
But when it comes to smaller items – like that $28,000 surgical drill we referenced earlier – he believes those could have been stolen.
“When it comes to (those items) it unfortunately could have been theft,” Shealey told I-Team 8 during an interview at the VA Marion Medical Center.
Shealey says that the RTLS technology has been somewhat successful at the VA’s NIHCS two campuses. When asked directly if it is successful, why has it not been fully implemented nationwide? Shealey said the VA is large system and that the four-year timetable for a roll out was not surprising to him.
While Shealey contends that the RTLS can help reduce theft or loss with these medical devices, his counterparts in Washington disagree to an extent.
Brayley contends that RTLS is not designed to be a loss prevention technology but rather to use the technology to help VA employees locate items “they are looking for.”
But the intention in that 2013 press release from the VA subcontractor appears to be clear – the intial phase was supposed to include asset management. Brayley admits the VA is not fully utilizing the technology to track items in real-time to date.
Bring me a blowtorch and I’ll find out whodunit.
Someone working there is stealing and selling equipment.
Somebody who worked there made a bit of cash selling the stuff on the side.
How about offering a reward? It had to be more than one person doing it, possibly a connection between the company that provided the stuff, and another person inside doctoring the paperwork. Somebody will snitch out their cronies if offered a reward.
What is the loss rate for non VA hospitals of similar size?
RTLS is worthwhile even without the secondary benefit of reducing theft.
It all went black market on the street to offset their meager Fed emp salaries!
On tons of small items in that inventory, what do you want to bet that many items were given away to veterans for home use, without recording the fact, because that would interrupt web-browsing, useless tons of useless meetings, or other “busy” work.
Small potatoes when the Defense Dept. can’t account for $6.5 TRILLION of its missing funds. With record keeping such as that, why give them another $21 BILLION to waste, as Pres. Trump and the GOP Congress just did. Someone needs to do their job right or go to jail.
I knew of an engineer that was selling company property on Ebay.
He even had a picture of himself and his Porsche on his ebay page with a long list of stuff he appropriated.
He was fired.
Never saw the VA give you anything without TONS of paper work. Speaking for some California VAs
“Never saw the VA give you anything without TONS of paper work.”
I have (NYC) and so has a brother (So Cal).
One only has to look at the vast staff of useless AA hires and there is your explanation.
Yes, I understand.
While any big bureaucracy has waste, corruption and a culture that can become tolerant of either or both, they all have good and bad actors in each. So yes, there can be VA Health Services centers run better and with less negligence and corruption than others.
Unfortunately,the bad apples always give a bad taste to the whole barrel in the minds of the public.
There are any number of wholesale changes to the way the VA works than could minimize some of that.
There will always be cases of bad behavior and bad results. But it does not mean we should not try to improve it.
This proves further that some VA staff are traitors who hates the Veterans they “serve”. To steal from those sick is disgusting. The VA system is sick and needs to be changed. Give the Veterans free medical chits and allow them to go where they want. Close the always, eternally corrupt, bloated, make-work VA system.
Absolutely needs overhaul
Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an entire theft ring selling stuff to cut-rate hospitals south of the border, or private clinics.
A lot of VA employees are there in make-work jobs and have the poor attitudes to show it.
I am all for giving veterans a “Veterans Insurance Card”, that provides for health care coverage for non-service-related conditions they are eligible to receive benefits for, that picks up those benefits privately, at the same out-of-pocket cost to the Veteran as it would be at a VA facility.
That would relieve a majority of the work at all the major VA facilities because the majority of care being done at most of them is for non-service related conditions.
If the VA has any direct health care responsibility is in service related conditions. That should be the priority of the VA health services and the majority of what a VA health facility is there for.
Smaller bureaucracy, more focused mission on those most deserving of VA direct attention after leaving service, and likely cost savings on the care paid for with the “VA Insurance Card”. Actually, that card, and its funding ought to be interrelated with Medicaid, as that is the economic situation of many vets using the VA for general health care.
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