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Veterans: VA hospital nicknamed 'Candy Land' because painkillers given out freely
By Aaron Glantz
Jan 9th 2015
Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah, Wis., hand out so many narcotic painkillers that some veterans have taken to calling the place "Candy Land."
They call the hospital's chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, "the Candy Man."
The number of opiate prescriptions at the Tomah VA more than quintupled from 2004, the year before Houlihan became chief of staff of the hospital, to 2012, according to data obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
During the same period, the number of oxycodone pills handed out skyrocketed from 50,000 to 712,000, even as the number of veterans seeking care at the hospital declined, the data show.
Current and former hospital staff members described patients who show up to appointments stoned on painkillers and muscle relaxants, doze off and drool during therapy sessions, and burn themselves with cigarettes. They said Houlihan himself had "doped up" or "zombified" their patients and that workers who raised questions have been punished.
In August, a 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran died of an overdose in the inpatient psychiatric ward.
"It's a system that's gone completely haywire," said Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who in October resigned from his position as a secretary in the hospital's mental health clinic after two months, filing a federal whistleblower complaint on his way out.
The exponential growth in the use of narcotics transformed this rural medical center from a conservative prescriber of painkillers to one typical of runaway opiate prescription throughout the VA health care system. Its problems underscore the difficulty the VA is having in maintaining standards of quality patient care, even after a national scandal forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign in May.
Responding to years of complaints about Houlihan, the VA's inspector general filed a report in March that found the psychiatrist had, on average, prescribed the equivalent of 25,000 milligrams of morphine to each of the 128 patients he saw in 2012. Investigators said that level was "at considerable variance compared with most opioid prescribers" and "raised potentially serious concerns" that should be brought to the attention of the federal agency's leadership.
Independent experts contacted by CIR said it was disturbing that the top prescriber of painkillers was a psychiatrist charged with treating mental, rather than physical, ailments.
Continued here http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-tomah-va-hospital-nw-20150109-story.html#page=1
By Aaron Glantz
Jan 9th 2015
Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah, Wis., hand out so many narcotic painkillers that some veterans have taken to calling the place "Candy Land."
They call the hospital's chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan, "the Candy Man."
The number of opiate prescriptions at the Tomah VA more than quintupled from 2004, the year before Houlihan became chief of staff of the hospital, to 2012, according to data obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
During the same period, the number of oxycodone pills handed out skyrocketed from 50,000 to 712,000, even as the number of veterans seeking care at the hospital declined, the data show.
Current and former hospital staff members described patients who show up to appointments stoned on painkillers and muscle relaxants, doze off and drool during therapy sessions, and burn themselves with cigarettes. They said Houlihan himself had "doped up" or "zombified" their patients and that workers who raised questions have been punished.
In August, a 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran died of an overdose in the inpatient psychiatric ward.
"It's a system that's gone completely haywire," said Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who in October resigned from his position as a secretary in the hospital's mental health clinic after two months, filing a federal whistleblower complaint on his way out.
The exponential growth in the use of narcotics transformed this rural medical center from a conservative prescriber of painkillers to one typical of runaway opiate prescription throughout the VA health care system. Its problems underscore the difficulty the VA is having in maintaining standards of quality patient care, even after a national scandal forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign in May.
Responding to years of complaints about Houlihan, the VA's inspector general filed a report in March that found the psychiatrist had, on average, prescribed the equivalent of 25,000 milligrams of morphine to each of the 128 patients he saw in 2012. Investigators said that level was "at considerable variance compared with most opioid prescribers" and "raised potentially serious concerns" that should be brought to the attention of the federal agency's leadership.
Independent experts contacted by CIR said it was disturbing that the top prescriber of painkillers was a psychiatrist charged with treating mental, rather than physical, ailments.
Continued here http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-tomah-va-hospital-nw-20150109-story.html#page=1
