The former chief of staff of the Tomah VA Medical Center has agreed to permanently surrender his license to practice medicine in Wisconsin.
Category: Opiates
Prescriptions of four potent opiates to veterans more than tripled in the decade after 9/11, contributing to drug abuse, addiction and suicide. The VA is trying to combat the problem, with uneven results.
Opiate prescriptions down at the VA, alternatives on the rise
The Department of Veterans Affairs is doling out narcotics to 160,000 fewer veterans than it was three years ago, a reduction of nearly 25 percent, and alternative treatments are on the rise.
Obama signs new opiate safety law for veterans
President Barack Obama has signed sweeping new narcotics reforms into law that dramatically change the way the Department of Veterans Affairs dispenses and monitors dangerous and addictive opiates.
Posted inHidden Abuse Under the Watchtower, Inside the Newsroom, Left for Dead, Oil and Mining, Opiates, Rape on the Night Shift, Religion, Returning Home to Battle
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Check out five pieces of our best long-form writing from 2015, as selected by Reveal’s staff.
VA fires doctor known as ‘Candy Man’
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.
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
Wisconsin veterans hospital’s former director no longer on VA payroll
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.
Posted inBenefits, Health Care, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Federal report confirms veteran’s overdose death at Tomah VA hospital
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.
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA whistleblower asks Obama to hire inspector general from outside
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.
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
Embattled VA inspector general to resign after calls for his ouster
Department of Veterans Affairs’ Deputy Inspector General Richard Griffin had been under fire for more than a year over problems at VA hospitals, including the overprescription of opiates at the Tomah, Wisconsin, facility dubbed “Candy Land.”
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
Congressional hearing reveals 4 more deaths at Tomah, Wisconsin, VA
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.