Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
VA Official Pushes Back Against Watchdog Report Blasting Phoenix Hospital
Despite a new report raising serious questions about the quality of care within the Phoenix VA Health Care System, a top official in the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs said Wednesday that significant progress has been made. ... The report, which was released Tuesday, found Phoenix VA staff inappropriately canceled medical consults that possibly contributed to the death of one veteran who did not get a recommended stress test. Consults include appointments, lab tests, teleconferencing and other planned patient contacts. (10/5)
In other news on veterans' health care聽鈥
Retired Marine Corps Sgt. John Peck is crying as he lies on the operating table, the stumps of his arms anesthetized, the room filled with lights and figures in blue scrubs. He鈥檚 been praying since his plane left Virginia the night before, asking for strength. And a nurse keeps trying to comfort him. But the weight of what鈥檚 happening has hit him, and for the moment he is overcome. It鈥檚 been six years since he stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan and became a quadruple amputee. Almost two years since he got on the waiting list for a double arm transplant. Less than 24 hours since the urgent summons from the hospital here. (Ruane, 10/5)
The LSD experiments were conducted by VA psychiatrist Ken Godfrey, one of the doctors who had presented on his research in the 1965 colloquium at the Menninger Clinic, then in Topeka. Any records that would show whether Rowland was part of the LSD research are either missing or don鈥檛 exist. But he stayed at the Topeka VA hospital briefly in 1972, and a subsequent doctor鈥檚 note, recorded when Rowland visited the Kansas City VA hospital, includes this scrawled entry: 鈥淭he (patient) feels that on last admission he was given LSD and suffered hallucinations.鈥 (Robertson, 10/5)