Government health care
ST. LOUIS, Illinois – Investigators flagged 19 deaths over the past two years at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Illinois as possibly linked to substandard care, an angry VA official said Monday as he apologized to affected families and pledged reform.
The hospital in Marion, Ill., undertook many surgeries that its staffing or lack of proper surgical expertise made it ill-equipped to handle and hospital administrators were too slow to respond once problems surfaced, said Dr. Michael Kussman, U.S. veterans affairs undersecretary for health.
