Durbin, Obama want VA to explain deaths at Marion hospital
CHICAGO --Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama want the secretary of Veterans Affairs to explain how a surgeon with a history of malpractice complaints in Massachusetts was hired at a VA medical facility in Southern Illinois.
The senators wrote to VA Secretary R. James Nicholson on Monday, calling the hiring of Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez at the Marion VA Medical Center "extremely distressing." Veizaga-Mendez, resigned from the hospital last month, shortly before the hospital suspended inpatient surgeries because of a spike in post-surgical deaths.
"The most recent revelation that (Veterans Affairs Medical Center) employed a surgeon who had been barred from practicing in another state casts doubt on the adequacy of the VA's system of credentialing and quality control," the letter said.
It was the second such letter sent by Durbin and Obama to Nicholson this month. The first was sent Sept. 17 and asked for more information about the VA's investigation into the spike in deaths at the Marion facility from October 2006 to March 2007.
The VA has temporarily suspended all inpatient surgeries in Marion as it conducts its investigation, and patients requiring surgery are being referred to nearby hospitals.
Veizaga-Mendez resigned from the Marion hospital last month. He had been hired by the VA despite being prohibited from practicing in Massachusetts last year after being accused of "grossly" substandard care.
The widow of one of Veizaga-Mendez's patients has filed an administrative complaint with the VA after learning that the doctor had resigned. Katrina Shank's 50-year-old husband Bob, of Murray, Ky., died Aug. 10, a day after undergoing surgery at the Marion VA hospital.
A message left for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington was not immediately returned Monday. A telephone listing for Veizaga-Mendez could not be found.
The hospital, which treats veterans from southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and western Kentucky, has reassigned or placed on leave four officials at the hospital, including the chief of surgery.
