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VA: 10 patients died under surgeon’s care

By Associated Press

Ten patients died under the care of an embattled surgeon during the roughly 20 months he worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Southern Illinois, according to a letter released Friday.

But Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, who received the letter, said they’re not satisfied with the department’s response to pointed questions about how the agency handled a background check before hiring Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez at the Marion VA hospital.

The department’s unfolding probe of Veizaga-Mendez and federal patient privacy laws precluded the release of details about the deaths, Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Gordon Mansfield told the senators in the letter dated Oct. 12 and released Friday by Durbin.

Durbin said last month VA officials told him nine veterans — all in some way linked to Veizaga-Mendez — died at the hospital during a six-month period ending in March, during which the hospital would have expected only two deaths.

Bolivian-trained Veizaga-Mendez, 69, worked at the Marion hospital from January 2006 until he resigned Aug. 13, three days after a Kentucky man apparently bled to death after undergoing gallstone-removal surgery Veizaga-Mendez performed.

The hospital suspended its inpatient operations shortly afterward, and Durbin and Obama have publicly prodded the VA for answers, including how it hired Veizaga-Mendez, who last year surrendered his Massachusetts medical license. On Wednesday, Illinois regulators indefinitely suspended Veizaga-Mendez’s license after he agreed to stop practicing in the state.

Veizaga-Mendez, who did not attend Wednesday’s hearing, has no listed telephone number in Illinois and Massachusetts and has been unreachable for comment. Telephone messages left with his attorney for the licensing matter, A. Jay Goldstein, were not returned.

Durbin and Obama want the VA to explain why it believes the deaths at the Marion VA spiked from October 2006 through March 2007.

The VA told the senators that 36 deaths at the Marion hospital from April through September of this year — after the apparent spike — were 2.4 percent of all hospital discharges, a rate consistent with the national VA medical center’s inpatient mortality rate of 2.45 percent last year.

The VA’s response “raised more questions than it answered,’’ Durbin and Obama said Thursday in a letter to Mansfield.

The lawmakers demanded information ranging from breakdowns of actual and expected rates of postoperative infection during Veizaga-Mendez’s time in Marion, hospital readmissions within 30 days, average lengths of hospitalizations and “other relevant indicators of surgical care quality.’’

They want the VA to prove it checked the National Practitioner Data Bank before hiring Veizaga-Mendez and to disclose what it found, including “any information returned that would give the VA a reasonable cause for concern in allowing Dr. Veizaga-Mendez to care for veterans.’’

They’re also asking the VA to explain its credentialing process, including questions it asked Veizaga-Mendez, the responses and whether they conflicted with information the VA might have known about charges or claims against the doctor in Massachusetts.

The VA defended its vetting of Veizaga-Mendez, saying it contacted Massachusetts’ regulatory Board of Registration in Medicine in December 2005, which said the surgeon’s license there was “current.’’ A query of the Federation of State Medical Boards showed no actions had been taken against the doctor by any state licensing boards, the VA said.

“The response from the (Massachusetts regulatory) board also disclosed that no complaints had been investigated and closed regarding this physician, and that no disciplinary actions had been taken involving this physician,’’ the VA told the senators.

The VA did not know whether Massachusetts officials were investigating Veizaga-Mendez because open complaints under review are not disclosed, the department said.

Even before the Marion VA hired him in January 2006, the doctor had paid out two malpractice suits in Massachusetts and was under investigation there on suspicion of botching seven cases, two of which ended in deaths.

The VA suggested to Durbin and Obama that “Congress, in its oversight capacity, has the power to obtain the information you are requesting.’’ A written request from the chairman of the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee would enable the VA to provide the information, the response said.

Its investigation of cases Veizaga-Mendez managed in Marion should determine “if the care provided met acceptable clinical standards,’’ the VA said.

Durbin and Obama also want the VA to detail whether it believes problems with patient safety and care extend beyond Marion and if the VA’s leadership is “aware of other allegations of poor patient care and lax patient safety.’’

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