This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 10, 2011 - WASHINGTON - While top Veterans Affairs health officials and inspectors for a hospital accreditation commission were at John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan urged the head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to solve the problems reported at the facility.
"In my years in public service, this . . . has made me madder than just about anything I've ever seen," Carnahan, D-St. Louis, told journalists after the session in his office in Washington. He said he told Veterans Department Secretary Eric Shinseki "of my deep frustration at the slow pace [of reform] and some of the systemic issues that are apparent at Cochran."
In a statement afterward, Shinseki described his meeting with Carnahan as "very productive." and while Shinseki called a recent report about unsterile medical equipment at the hospital "an isolated incident," he said the VA department's "health-care organization has an obligation to identify ways to improve services and care for veterans."
Shinseki said that both VA staff chief John Gingrich and William Schoenhard, VHA's deputy under secretary for health for operations and management, were "on the ground in St. Louis" on Thursday to meet with VA staff, veterans and others "to acknowledge the good work of our local hospital staff and discuss concerns, questions and the medical center's way forward."
Shinseki added: "While we are never pleased when we have to suspend operations and inconvenience veterans, this was an isolated incident with medical equipment at the John Cochran.... We must not lose sight of the fact that a VA employee had the integrity and courage to identify the problem during a routine exam and notified supervisors. This was the responsible and right decision to assure that no veterans were put at risk."
After meeting with Shinseki, Carnahan also met with Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 18,000 health-care organizations and programs nationwide.
This week, inspectors from the joint commission were visiting Cochran, and the medical center's chief of nursing sent an internal message asking the hospital staff to make sure that the patients and the facility were in good shape when the inspectors visited.
Carnahan said he told Shinseki and Chassin that "we have to have a top to bottom review of the facility, we need to utilize the results of these investigations that are pending, and we need to have a comprehensive and bold turnaround plan for Cochran."
On Tuesday, all four U.S. senators and six House members from Missouri and Illinois sent a letter to Shinseki, asking him to investigate and "find solutions" to straighten out safety issues at Cochran. "Potential problems in quality management cause grave concern, not just for veterans served by Cochran, but the entire community," they wrote.
The lawmakers asked the VA Department to list measures that have been taken to prevent future contaminations and to report any health problems discovered as a result of the most recent incident. They also requested to be informed of the results of instrument handling reviews conducted in response to an incident last June that caused the VA Department to suspend services in the dental clinic.
On Thursday, nine U.S. House members from Missouri and Illinois sent a letter to the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., asking that the panel return to St. Louis to hold a second hearing on the problems at Cochran.
The joint letter contends that "serious systemic issues at Cochran" need to be investigated and notes that that surgeries at the Marion, Ill., VA Medical Center have still not resumed after problems surfaced there in 2007. The committee had held a special hearing in St. Louis last summer after the safety lapses at Cochran's dental clinic.
The House members signing the letter were Reps. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville; Jerry Costello, D-Belleville; Carnahan; William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis; Todd Akin, R-Town and Country; Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau; Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth; Bobby Schilling, R-Moline; and Tim Johnson, R-Il.
The congressional letters followed a report last week that Cochran had suspended surgeries after staff noticed evidence of contamination of surgical instrument trays. A few weeks ago, nurses at the hospital had expressed concerns about broken equipment, staffing levels and the lack of access to some medical supplies. And last summer, the medical center had said that sterilization problems in its dental clinic had potentially exposed about 1,800 veterans to hepatitis and HIV.