VA officials will review claims of a malfunctioning computer system and a hostile work atmosphere.
By PAUL DE LA GARZA
Published February 20, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Increasing pressure on an embattled hospital, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi on Thursday ordered a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of mismanagement at Bay Pines VA Medical Center.
The VA's Office of Inspector General will review a new $450-million hospital computer system that Bay Pines officials say does not work. It also will look into allegations that hospital administrators have fostered a hostile work environment.
Principi relayed his decision to House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young and Sen. Bill Nelson, both of whom welcomed the investigation.
The two lawmakers have sought separate congressional investigations after articles appeared in the St. Petersburg Times about surgery delays caused by the computer system.
"This really bothers me because Bay Pines has always been a premier medical facility, has always taken good care of the veterans, and this is just not right for this to be happening," said Young, a Largo Republican.
Nelson agreed, saying that in his conversation with Principi, he demanded that the secretary hold someone accountable for the problems with the computer system.
"Somebody needs to get it tended to because you just can't have a major facility functioning like it is," said Nelson, a Florida Democrat who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He said Principi acknowledged "a real personnel and management problem, and a leadership problem" at Bay Pines.
Nelson helped to set Thursday's events into motion by visiting the hospital a day earlier.
After a briefing with hospital administrators, he told a packed news conference Wednesday that Principi was to blame for the failures of the computer system.
Principi spokeswoman Jo Schuda declined to comment on Principi's decision to investigate Bay Pines. But she said the problems have been amplified by calls for various congressional inquiries.
"It's taken on a bigger firestorm of sensitivity," she said.
The inspector general investigation is the latest of several inquiries into hospital operations:
- Young said he would dispatch a special investigative team to Bay Pines. He said investigators - at his command as chairman of the Appropriations Committee - would arrive unannounced.
- Young said he also had asked Principi to testify before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD and independent agencies next week on the problems plaguing Bay Pines.
- Nelson is requesting that the Veterans' Affairs Committee in the Senate investigate Bay Pines.
- The House Veterans' Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing for March 17 on the computer system, known as the Core Financial and Logistics System, or CoreFLS. The software program was developed to track and control finances, vendor payouts and supply inventories.
Among investigators' most pressing questions is why the VA chose Bay Pines, the second busiest VA hospital in the country, to test the computer system last October.
Smith Jenkins, director at Bay Pines, says the VA wants to implement CoreFLS nationwide within two years. The James A. Haley VA Medical Center in Tampa, the busiest VA hospital in the country, is scheduled to get CoreFLS in April.
In an e-mail to hospital staff Thursday, hospital administrators said they would hold two town hall-style meetings today to bring everybody up to date on the latest developments.
"The purpose of the meetings is to discuss issues relating to CoreFLS, rescheduling of surgeries, and the newspaper articles published over the past two to three weeks," the e-mail said.
The hospital plans to resume surgeries today on a limited basis. Last Friday, Jenkins announced Bay Pines was delaying all surgeries because of a shortage of surgical supplies caused by computer problems.
Amid the several investigations into Bay Pines, a separate inquiry has been completed. But the results of an investigation into the conduct of the chief of staff at Bay Pines, Dr. Pramod K. Mohanty, have not been revealed.
That investigation was ordered by Dr. Elwood J. Headley, director of the VA hospital network in Florida, southern Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In December, the Times reported that nearly two dozen doctors at the hospital had expressed concerns about Mohanty, alleging his actions endangered the health of veterans.
A staff shortage, for example, has forced patients suspected of having cancer to wait months before their X-rays are processed, the doctors charged.
In late January, a team of VA investigators from South Florida and Puerto Rico visited Bay Pines as part of its investigation.
In an interview, Jenkins said he had not read the report and declined to provide a copy of it. But he defended its integrity.
Dr. John Vara, the chief of staff at the Miami VA Medical Center, led the investigation. "There is no way he would whitewash anything. He has a lot of integrity."
