FOIA Friday: Database of Thousands of Medical Malpractice Claims Against the Veterans Health Administration

By Nick Schwellenbach

This week’s document: A spreadsheet of claims filed against the Department of Veterans Affairs, many of which relate to medical malpractice.

Agency: Department of Veterans Affairs

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) of 1946 allowed private citizens to sue the federal government for certain kinds of torts, including “personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the government while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” With roots also in 1946, the Veterans Health Administration, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is “the nation’s largest integrated health care system,” according to the Congressional Research Service. For fiscal year 2011, the VA estimates it will treat some 6.1 million patients.

What do you get when there’s a massive healthcare system with a law allowing claims and lawsuits for wrongful injury or death? Lots of claims of malpractice. (Important note: A recent and well-respected book makes a compelling case that the VA healthcare system is better than most of the rest of the U.S. healthcare system—but even the best healthcare systems will still have instances of malpractice.)

The VA has a process for filing claims. It begins with an administrative process—the Excel spreadsheet represents these administrative claims. Complainants can choose to go to federal court with a lawsuit if the administrative process doesn’t yield a satisfactory result in their view.

The data provided has details on over 12,000 claims against the VA from 1989 to November 2008, although the data appears largely incomplete for the first several years. Not all of the claims are medical malpractice-related, but several thousand are. There are fields for the VA facility involved, the date the claim was received, the date of the last tort status (where the claim is in the administrative process), the date of that status, alleged negligence descriptions (none exist for non-medical malpractice tort cases), and amount paid out, if any. The spreadsheet is over two years old, so the latest tort status field may be out-of-date for many of these claims.

Nick Schwellenbach is POGO's Director of Investigations.

Comments

[Thomas A. Sharon, R.N., M.P.H.]

Most patients don't know when they become victims of malpractice. New studies tell us that the estimates of 200,000 preventible hospital deaths per year that we have seen since 1999 were bogus. The actual numbers are ten times that many at 2 million. That's one in every fifty hospital admissions. Therefore, hospitals are killing more people than heart attacks. What we need is aggressive public education through seminars and webinars for people who have questions about their hospital experience. http:nursetom.com

[Nick Schwellenbach]

Jim,

It's a good question. Let me see if I can figure that one out.

Also, you may want to inquire with the VA's Office of Public Affairs.

Best regards,
Nick

[Jim Mulder]

Nick,

Can you explain the difference between the "Amount Paid" and the "Amount Lit Paid" columns and what exactly those dollar amounts represent?

Thanks

[Nick Schwellenbach]

Berta,

The VA Office of General Counsel maintains these records.

http://www.foia.va.gov/docs/Freq-Req-Rec-by-Office.pdf

You can file a FOIA w/ the VA's FOIA office: http://www.foia.va.gov/index.asp

Best,
Nick

[Berta Simmons]

I didn't see my FTCA VA case on the list.

Wrongful death. Settled with USA (via VA OGC) in 1997.

Two VAMCs involved.

Never reported to the NPDB in defiance of the NPDB mandate that VA agreed to long ago.

Can I ask where the FOIA was sent that produced this info?