VA Terminates Another Whistle-Blower
Michael Volpe Daily Caller, Contributor 11:22 PM 08/29/2017
The Department of Veterans Affairs has terminated another whistle-blower.
The John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (PBVAMC) sent a termination notice to Dr. Dale Klein on last Tuesday.
“In connection with the proposed removal dated May 22, 2017, a decision has been made to discharge you from federal employment effective August 22, 2017,” a termination letter written by Dr. Michael Adelman, the Veteran Integrated Services Network (VISN) 4 director and the deciding officer on Dr. Klein’s case, stated.
Klein was terminated ostensibly for failure to follow orders, but his attorneys at the Whistleblower Law Firm are crying foul, stating that it was whistle-blower retaliation.
Klein disclosed patient care issues in the pain management department — where he was a doctor — at the hospital in 2015 and in May 2017, the VA Office of Inspector General validated his concerns.
“We substantiated the allegation of poor management of long-term opioid therapy for pain for the 10 patients we reviewed,” the inspector general report stated.
Rather than fixing the issue, the hospital retaliated against Klein: “On May 28, 2016, after Klein’s superiors found out he’d blown the whistle on what he saw as serious problems, the VA closed his clinic and tried to fire him. When the agency learned Klein could not be fired because he was a whistleblower, his superiors forced him to sit in a room for a year, with no patients and no duties, all the while paying him his full salary of $250,000 a year,” a Fox New article from June stated.
Soon after that article came out, the VA medical center did “a 180,” according to Klein’s attorney, Natalie Khawam, and ordered him to see patients again.
Since that new order, Klein has only seen two patients.
The hospital claims it’s because he refuses to do so, but Khawam said it was because the hospital refused to schedule any more patients.
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