Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 13, 1992 TAG: 9203130520
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMA L. LEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Let me suggest that it is an effective and time-honored bureaucratic tradition to draw attention away from a problem by attacking the person who delivers the message. The nightwatchman who reported the Watergate break-in during the Nixon administration is probably still unemployed. The life of a whistleblower is dangerous and often tormented by those exposed in the process of public disclosure. If my charges and statements are without merit, then they should die in the public forum rather than in a dark alley.
A review of a few facts that are a matter of public record should help place this controversy in perspective. For almost two decades, a positive working partnership existed between the employees' union and agency management at the Salem VA Medical Center. This mutually beneficial relationship was abruptly ended with the untimely death of our previous medical center director, Hugh Davis. It was the employees' union that came together with all individuals and organizations who could recall the smoothly operating medical-service delivery system enjoyed during Davis' term of stewardship to name the newly constructed clinical-support building in his honor.
Both the American Federation of Government Employees and the Department of Veterans Affairs operate under the provisions of federal statute. Our current medical-center director and I are merely temporary caretakers of these two organizations that exist to further the national goal of providing the best medical care possible to our military veterans.
Please give thought to a few considerations before forming an opinion as to how things really are at the Salem VA Medical Center.
1. As president of the AFGE, I am in an unpaid position with many long hours of my off-duty time spent on issues involving the interests of the hundred of employees at the medical center.
2. The beginning of the chaos at the medical center can be timed with the arrival of the new medical-center director.
3. The union and its employees have always vigorously advocated the highest of professional standards of performance and conduct for the staff. Both the agency and the union strongly support the rigorous certification and licensure process that professional medical staff must satisfy before being allowed to provide medical care to our veterans. The joint committee on accreditation of health-care organizations has attested to the competency of the health-care professionals at the Salem VA Medical Center by repeated renewal of the accreditation status of the facility.
The union does oppose any effort to intimidate the professional staff by any process introduced in the name of patient care. The savings-and-loan crisis might have been avoided if the federal bank examiners had been protected from intimidation.
Does anyone besides me wonder why the medical center director feels that he is better positioned to judge the competency of our professional staff at the VA Medical Center than the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the various professional credentialing entities that are considered to be satisfactory safeguards of quality care by all other health-care facilities, both public and private?
4. A recent survey shows employees at the Salem center feel that working conditions have deteriorated and that the quality of patient care is declining.
5. It took congressional action to prevent the Salem VA Medical Center director from providing medical care to non-veterans while medical care is being denied veterans at the facility.
Federal law requires that the director negotiate with the employees regarding conditions of employment. The law also provides that no issues can be negotiated that would hinder agency management in the operation of the medical center. If Graninger would simply obey the law, instead of calling for an end-run around a system of dispute resolution that is working at more than 170 other VA medical centers nationwide, the employees and managers who have worked so well together for decades on behalf of the veterans could recapture the quality care of times past.
Alma L. Lee is president of the AFGE Local 1739 of the VA Medical Center in Salem.
by CNB