Deputy VA Secretary Gordon Mansfield said the problems at Bay Pines were not solely linked to a flawed computer system.
By PAUL DE LA GARZA
Published February 24, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - The No. 2 official at the Department of Veterans Affairs vowed Monday to personally monitor Bay Pines VA Medical Center and ensure improvements in the quality of care.
"We've got to figure out what we need to do to get this hospital 100 percent," Deputy VA Secretary Gordon Mansfield said in an editorial board meeting with the St. Petersburg Times.
Mansfield stressed that the majority of patients at Bay Pines receive quality care.
After being sworn in Thursday, Mansfield said, VA Secretary Anthony Principi asked him to make Bay Pines a priority and dispatched him to St. Petersburg.
Last week, Bay Pines became the target of five separate federal investigations.
Investigators began arriving at the hospital Monday to look into allegations that poor leadership has hurt the quality of care. They also are reviewing a $450-million computer system that is being tested at Bay Pines before the VA rolls it out nationwide.
Hospital administrators say the software has inherent flaws. As a result, surgeries routinely have been delayed, and staff members have complained that they cannot keep track of expenditures.
At the heart of the debate is quality of care.
In a town hall-style meeting Friday, Dr. Linda Lewallen, a cardiologist, complained that a patient had died as a result of bad management.
Other doctors complained that a shortage of radiologists is putting cancer patients at risk.
"I have this one on my conscience, and his family works at this institution, and I have to face that," Lewallen told Dr. Elwood J. Headley, director of the VA Hospital network in Florida, southern Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. "This is not amusing."
Hospital administrators said they had no details about the case Lewallen cited, and Lewallen declined to talk to reporters.
Mansfield said he will look into the allegations.
He met Monday with hospital staff members and veterans organizations, and watched a demonstration of the Core Financial and Logistics System computer system, or CoreFLS.
He acknowledged problems with CoreFLS.
"If we knew that the problems we have now were going to develop, it wouldn't have been laid out. It wouldn't have been put in a pilot stage," Mansfield said. "We would've said, "Take it back."'
He said the computer system "looked good on paper and in the planning. But when they got it down to the real world, (software programmers) didn't account for the breadths and depths of what they have to do in a hospital."
Mansfield said he did not know why the CoreFLS team did not put a backup plan in place, should the pilot fail.
The question now, he said, is whether it makes sense to continue with CoreFLS.
"And right now, I think the answer is, we continue to look to see if we can make this thing work the way it's supposed to without doubling the cost," he said.
"Do I wish I could sit here and say we knew at $5-million that we're going to have these problems? I sure do. At $100-million? But we didn't."
Mansfield said the problems at Bay Pines were not solely linked to a flawed computer system.
He said complaints about management had been addressed as part of an internal VA review ordered by Headley. The results of that review have not been released.
Federal investigators also plan to look at allegations of mismanagement.
