“But even with the best health care system in the world, you are going to have instances of malpractice,” Yeager said.
The new database provides a glimpse at 12,000 claims, many of them medical malpractice complaints, filed against VA medical centers nationwide between 1989 and 2008. The information was recently released by The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog group that obtained the database from the Department of Veterans Affairs through a Freedom of Information Act request.
A spreadsheet, available online (http://pogoarchives.org/m/ns/va-medmal-database.xls), gives a breakdown of claims information for each of the VA’s 153 medical centers.
At one time vets and their families who believed they were victims of malpractice or negligence in VA medical centers were unable to sue. That changed in 1946 when Congress passed the Federal Tort Claims Act, which gives veterans the right to recover damages from the federal government for injuries caused by malpractice or negligence by federal employees.
The database shows 31 claims were filed against the Syracuse VA during that 19 year period. The claims included allegations such as misdiagnosis, wrong diagnosis, delay in treatment and failure to recognize complications. Ten of the cases involved patient deaths.
Image courtesy Jennifer 'Emery' Bakken
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