Watchdog Bytes

Focus group: VA unorganized, error prone, rude and you can't get in

Looks like the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to work on its people skills. Also its doctor skills, phone skills, financial skills, logistics and probably everything else.

According to VA blogger Ken Mac Garrigle, the VA asked a focus group, "What is the VA not particularly helpful with?"

The answers:

Access to care: “Too long to get an appointment”
“Can’t get claim processed”
“Not enough doctors at VA close to home - need to travel further.”
 
Access to Care/Quality of Care: “Lack of flexibility, locations and amount of time it takes to get an appointment” “Unorganized with everything ranging from billing and medical records to referrals for specialists”
“Lack of supplies on occasion.”
 
Care: “Consistency”; “Doctors don’t give same diagnosis”; “Don’t take care of physical problems as well as mental problems”; “No plan of care – keep jumping around”; “There were all kinds of errors in psychological report, wrong dates, notes, etc.”
 
Customer Service: “Rude over the phone while trying to schedule an appointment”

“I just don’t think VA employees really care.”

-- Darren Barbee

Hey babe, let me fondle your olecranial.

Warning, this one gets tawdry, so read immediately.
Garfield Medical Center allowed a male employee to harass female employees, offer to pay for sex and do naughty things, according to a lawsuit against the acute care facility in Monterey Park, Calif.
The lawsuit does not name the employee but does name plenty of other stuff, including that he made obscene comments regarding underage patients at the facility, according to a press release. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed the suit, says he also subjected female employees to a “barrage of inappropriate touching and rubbing of body parts, propositions for romantic dates and sex-for-pay.”
He also indulged in discussion of sexual activities and “vulgar comments regarding female employee’s body parts.” (Photo,left, is a representation of creepiness and not the actual creepiness the suit says occurred.)
The EEOC claims that Garfield terminated an employee because she complained about the harassment, while others were compelled to quit rather than endure the severely hostile work environment. The hospital had no comment.
The EEOC’s suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the victims of harassment, back pay for the victims of retaliation and constructive discharge, and injunctive relief intended to prevent harassment and retaliation at Garfield.
The center employs about 1,300 employees at its 210-bed acute care facility.
By the way, here's the definition for olecranial.

-- Darren Barbee

Study: Smoking cigarettes mutates DNA, seduces the cancer out of your genes

A pack a day messes up your DNA.
A study of how genes control cell function in 1,240 people identified more than 300 genes influenced by smoking. And they aren't the happy-go-lucky genes that make you look younger and sexier.
About 70 of the genes were cancer-related.
(At right: Screen legend Humphrey Bogart, seen here at age 23*, getting his smoke on. *An alert reader pointed out that Bogart isn't really 23 in this picture. We (meaning Barbee) were making a lame joke about smoking making you look older.)
"The simple message is that exposure to cigarette smoke isn’t simply bad for your health. It’s changing the way your whole body behaves at the fundamental level of your genes," Jac Charlesworth of Australia’s Menzies Research Institute told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Ira Dreyfuss.
Other genes influenced by smoking were associated with the body's immune response system.

-- Darren Barbee

New on the sugar beat

The Center for Consumer Freedom is fighting back against the pitch that so-called natural table sugar made from beets or sugar cane is healthier than other sugars such as high fructose corn syrup.

It should be noted the center is a nonprofit organization supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers to “promote personal responsibility” which we think means you should slurp up the syrup if you want to.

Anyway, the center has put together this video of a Julia Child impersonator (we give her three stars out of five) to show all that’s required to make that nice white sugar that you put in your coffee, cornflakes and ex-boyfriend's gas tank.

 

-- Darren Barbee