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Salem VA latest agency misstep as new report cites missing items worth $1.7M

by Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | July 23, 2015
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Theft, however, while serious, isn't necessarily the biggest problem that the station uncovered. It's the poor record keeping by the VA facility. Stuff just gets misplaced, and stored in a disorganized fashion.

An anonymous source also told the station that he had found patient records in boxes, furniture and medical equipment stashed haphazardly on floors and in rooms, including the bathroom.

When confronted by the news crew about the state of security at the facility, its Chief Logistics Officer James Kelly said when something is not accounted for on the annual inventory a team is sent to look for missing items – and that the issue "is always on our radar.”

The team's suggestions about ways to ensure that such a problem doesn't reoccur after its investigation are also sent to higher command.

The news team found that some things reported missing, like a pair of hospital beds in 2014, had actually been traded in, but the records never changed to reflect it.

In fact, after being confronted about potentially missing items by the station, Kelly actually determined that, “by item count we were able to locate about 50 percent of each one of those in each respective year.”

Kelly told the station, that the inaccurate official records were "concerning." He added that thanks to the light shone on the Salem VA issues with tracking items, he would be looking into training employees more and making possible process changes to ensure the records were kept properly in the future.

But the disguised, anonymous employee had less hope for change, telling the station, “the people who are running VA, they know this and for some reason are allowed to continue this behavior. I don’t believe it’ll stop until multiple agencies go in and investigate VA.”

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