PITTSBURGH – Democratic U.S. Reps. Summer Lee and Chris Deluzio and U.S. Senators John Fetterman and Bob Casey sent a letter Tuesday to the director of the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Healthcare System seeking answers about “challenges” facing the system serving about 84,000 veterans in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Lawmakers asked VAPHS Director Donald Koenig to address the facility’s recent low rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — the lowest possible rating — and what they described as “chronic” staffing shortages. They also raised concerns about suicide of a patient on the spot last year.
In the letter, Koenig was asked to develop and present action plans to address these issues.
“We appreciate your efforts to improve VAPHS and address some of its pressing needs, including chronic staffing shortages, the opening of a new outpatient clinic in Monroeville, and critical structural issues at the 70-year-old University Drive Hospital,” the letter reads. “Despite these efforts, challenges remain — some unique to VAPHS and others related to the VA health care system as a whole — compromising the system’s ability to provide the critical care both needed and expected by the region’s veterans.”
The letter raised, among others, the following issues:
- “They are time-consuming,” and the facility is short-staffed in several key positions, including nursing, mental health, medical support and home care.
- VAPHS was one of only nine VA Medical Centers and Healthcare Systems to receive a one-star rating from CMS, out of 114 nationwide. Lawmakers acknowledged that this was the first year VA facilities were rated on the same scale as non-VA health care providers and that the metrics used gave an “outdated picture” of VAPHS’s performance, but they asked Koenig about his plans to improve the rating.
- There are no vehicles, including wheelchair accessible vehicles, available to transport veterans to meetings and other needs.
- On Oct. 10, a man identified in the lawmakers’ letter as a veteran committed suicide after bringing a gun to the VA hospital in O’Hara, near Pittsburgh. The lawmakers wrote that they heard from facility staff that communication about the incident and the subsequent review “left room for improvement” and requested a briefing from Koening.
As noted in the legislators’ letter, Koenig is the sixth executive director of VAPHS in the past five years.
VAPHS spokeswoman Shelley Kay Nulph said in an emailed statement to the Capital-Star that the organization is reviewing the letter and “will respond directly to senators and representatives in writing as soon as we are able. We appreciate the oversight from our congressional representatives to help us better serve veterans, and we are always happy to meet with them to discuss these and any other questions they may have.”
In 2012, VAPHS made national headlines when outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease led to the death of six patients and the illness of 16 others. The incident and its misconduct led to dismissal then-director Terry Gerigk Wolf.
