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This past year has been an important – and wild – one for us at Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting. Here’s a rundown of some of the dust we’ve kicked up, the changes we’ve spurred and the conversations we’ve started in 2015.
The chief of staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah, Wisconsin — exposed by Reveal for his opiate prescription practices — has been fired, effective Nov. 9.
Officials said the Tomah, Wisconsin, VA medical facility’s former director is no longer working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the latest development after our investigation of the hospital’s improper prescription practices.
Federal investigators have confirmed that a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs killed Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski, a psychiatric patient at the Tomah, Wisconsin, veterans hospital known as “Candy Land” for its rampant use of opiates.
Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran who quit his job at the Tomah, Wisconsin, veterans hospital after becoming aware of rampant opiate overprescription there, said the problems would only continue if a new watchdog was found within the agency.
A congressional hearing today revealed more unexpected deaths at the Tomah, Wisconsin, VA – known as “Candy Land” for the ease with which narcotic painkillers were prescribed – during Dr. David Houlihan’s decade as the hospital’s chief of staff.
Our investigation disclosing skyrocketing opiate prescriptions and retaliatory management practices at a VA medical center in Wisconsin touched off a variety of federal and state government investigations.
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspector general’s office has publicly released its scathing report documenting runaway painkiller prescriptions and abuse of administrative authority at the VA hospital in Tomah, Wisconsin, nearly a year after it closed the case.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs investigated problems at the Tomah VA Medical Center for two years but never released an official report of its findings, leaving some to wonder whether the agency is capable of policing itself.
Politicians from both parties and government bureaucrats are rushing to look into allegations of overmedication, retaliatory management practices and preventable overdose deaths at a Wisconsin VA hospital, revealed by CIR.