No news isn’t necessarily good news when it comes to the much-criticized Department of Veterans Affairs, especially when the agency keeps the news from being known. Late last week VA officials in Washington ordered regional managers to withhold release of independent reports solicited by the department on nursing home care being provided to veterans. The VA clamped down on the findings by the Long Term Care Institute after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published a report on a Philadelphia VA facility that had “failed to provide a safe and sanitary environment for their residents.”

Among the gruesome findings was one account of a veteran whose leg was amputated after nursing home staff failed to treat an infection in a timely manner and allowed maggots to invest the wound. Other problems described in the report included blood-stained floors, a fly infestation and life-threatening treatment of veterans dependent on tube feeding.
                                                                                                                                                       -Noel Brinkerhoff

Report on VA Flaws Here Leads to Disclosure Ban (by Walter F. Roche Jr., Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)