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A federal administrative judge has upheld the dismissal of the director of the Veterans Affairs health care system in Phoenix for accepting more than $13,000 in airline tickets and other gifts from a consultant for the health care industry, for failing to disclose some of the gifts and for placing a high-ranking doctor on administrative leave for providing Senator John McCain with information about patient suicides. The former director, Sharon Helman, had also been implicated in the falsification of the hospital’s waiting lists for care, a problem at Phoenix and other veterans’ hospitals that roiled the Department of Veterans Affairs this year and led to the resignation of the department’s secretary, Eric K. Shinseki. But the administrative judge, Stephen C. Mish, concluded that the department had not provided sufficient evidence to justify firing Ms. Helman for the manipulation of waiting lists, which concealed delays in providing care to veterans. (Oppel, 12/23)

The government agency charged with making sure federal employees are treated fairly upheld this week the Department of Veterans Affairs decision to “formally remove” Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix Department of Veterans Affairs’ Health Care System and the leader at the center of the biggest scandal in the agency’s history. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 12/24)

As Arizona military veterans waited months for doctor appointments in a broken health-care system, then-Phoenix VA hospital Director Sharon Helman went on a weeklong vacation to Disneyland secretly financed by an industry lobbyist, according to an administrative-law judge and documents obtained by The Arizona Republic. E-mail records and receipts examined by Chief Administrative Judge Stephen C. Mish indicate that Helman also got free concert and airline tickets and other perks from lobbyist Dennis "Max" Lewis, her previous boss. Based on that revelation, Mish on Monday upheld Helman's firing by the VA and rejected her appeal. (Wagner, 12/23)