Looks like the administrator of that VA hospital would have woke up before the guy killed nine patients. Crap like this sure gives a lot of ammo to idiots like Durbin and Obama.
"MARION, Ill. -- Bob Shank was in good spirits as he awaited gallstone-removal surgery at a veterans hospital in August, laughing as he handed his wife his false teeth for safekeeping.
If the 50-year-old Air Force veteran had any worries, it was whether his wife would be able to understand the postoperative instructions from his surgeon, Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, a Bolivian-trained physician with a thick accent.
"Pay close attention to what the doctor says, that you'll understand him," Shank pressed her as he was wheeled off to the operating room.
"They were the last words Katrina Shank ever heard from him. Her husband never woke up from surgery, and by the next day he had bled to death.
Shank, it turns out, was far from the only surgical patient to die under Veizaga-Mendez's care. Nine veterans -- all in some way linked to Veizaga-Mendez, officials say -- died in a six-month period ending in March, during which the hospital would have expected only two deaths.
Even before Veizaga-Mendez was hired at the Veterans Administration hospital, he had made payouts in two malpractice suits in Massachusetts and was under investigation there on suspicion of botching seven cases, two of which ended in deaths.
How the surgeon came to practice on veterans has raised troubling questions about the VA's screening of its doctors -- and about how much those who hired him in Illinois did to check his background in Massachusetts.
"I can't imagine how even the most rudimentary check of the last hospitals he was on staff at would not have revealed gigantic problems with this guy," Jim Harmon, an attorney for Katrina Shank, said this week. He has filed a claim on her behalf against the U.S. government, a precursor to a lawsuit.
Veizaga-Mendez, 69, resigned three days after Shank's death, and the VA hospital, which has 55 acute-care beds and is about 120 miles from St. Louis, suspended all surgery shortly after. The deaths involving Veizaga-Mendez are still under investigation, and details have not been released.
Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama wrote a letter Thursday to the VA, pressing acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield to detail the steps the agency took to check the surgeon's credentials. They said a cursory check of publicly available information by their staffs quickly raised red flags about the doctor.
"This is an extremely alarming revelation that calls into question the adequacy of the oversight exercised by the VA as it evaluates and monitors those who provide care to our veterans," the senators wrote.
Pete McBrady, acting director of the Marion VA Medical Center, said this week that the vetting process for job applicants typically includes checking licenses in other states and any records in the National Practitioner Data Bank, which includes malpractice claims. A panel of physicians also goes over references.
McBrady said that Veizaga-Mendez had a valid, unrestricted medical license in Massachusetts and Illinois when he was hired in January 2006 and that background checks did not reveal any prior or pending disciplinary action.
It turns out that at the time he was hired in Illinois, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine was investigating allegations of substandard care made against Veizaga-Mendez in 2004 and 2005, said board spokesman Russell Aims. The allegations involved seven patients, two of whom died.
But the VA would not have had access to that information because complaints are confidential while they are being investigated, Aims said.
In July 2006, six months after Veizaga-Mendez was hired at Marion, he voluntarily surrendered his Massachusetts license under pressure from the board.
Once Veizaga-Mendez gave up his license, the board was free to make the allegations public, Aims said.
Veizaga-Mendez, whose Illinois license remains valid pending a December hearing, has no listed telephone number in Illinois and Massachusetts and has been unreachable for comment.
A Massachusetts jury last March awarded Robert Whitney $652,000 on his claim that Veizaga-Mendez mistakenly put two stitches into his bladder during a 1997 hernia operation.
Whitney said he repeatedly went back to the surgeon to complain of intense abdominal pain, blood in his urine and other symptoms. "He kept handing me pain pills and antibiotics. He said, 'Maybe you've got a kidney stone. Go see a urologist,' " recalled Whitney, 44.
The complications hounded Whitney for nearly four years until, after seeing numerous specialists and having multiple invasive tests done, two other doctors discovered the misplaced sutures. By then, Whitney said, the ordeal had cost him his marriage and left him addicted to painkillers.
Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, a Bolivian-trained physician
It might sound bigoted of me but why get operated on by a doctor trained in a turd-world country?
Also, I don't give 'men' with hyphenated names the time of day, let alone be my physician.
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Obamanfreude - 1. taking pleasure from the misfortunes of an Obama supporter as he or she is adversely affected by the policies of their Dear Leader.
"It might sound bigoted of me but why get operated on by a doctor trained in a turd-world country?"
Exactly.Most of the ones i have met in the VA system are foreigners. When the VA found that my gall bladder needed removed and scheduled me for the operation,i said no thanks and had it done elsewhere.
It has to be Bush's fault for not firing this guy sooner.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
i hate surgery, especially when they give u statistics, like i went in onetime for a check up, and i was bored, so i looked at this pamphlet, it said that the chance that you will die from lypois 1 in 200!!! thats .5%! i dont care how overweight i will ever be, there is no way i would ever take that risk, not too mention, i wonder wut the conversation is like while they r suckin fat out of u
"hey dan"
"hey lisa, how r u today"
"fine...u?"
fine...holy crap this guy is fat, he must have eaten 2 boxes of ho hos every day"
"hahaha, no kiding, ...Deleted by CalHunter..."
Location: Obama made me join the NRA for 5 years !
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RE: VA Surgeon Kills Nine Patients
welcome to Hillary-Care - this will be common place if national health care comes about. Why ? Because you will not have a choice to NOT see the hyphenated named doctors with thick accents , hired in the name of diversity and equality, they are what you will be assigned in the national health care system, like it or leave it
A lot of the problem rests with the lobbying and protectionist policies of the AMA, you could be the next Dr. Jeckyl, killing people left and right, but they'll stand behind you keeping your license and the whole thing getting hushed up so that you can quietly set up shop in another state. Kinda like the Catholic church and it's child molestor problem in many ways.
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Because you will not have a choice to NOT see the hyphenated named doctors with thick accents , hired in the name of diversity and equality, they are what you will be assigned in the national health care system, like it or leave it
Whoa! Do I sense just a touch of bias in there somewhere? I wasn't aware that you can gauge proficiency by the color of one's skin or his or her lack of accent.
VA Surgeon Kills Nine Patients
