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So here we are again talking about a Dr who harmed veterans repeatedly before anything was done. VA did not report him national database that tracks problem doctors. They did let him retire, quietly ignoring the problems allowing him to move onto a private practice, then they failed for years to disclose to state regulators and patients who were harmed by him.
VA conceals shoddy care and health workers’ mistakes
CLOSE Behind the walls of the nation’s oldest veterans’ hospital, the reports were grim. Medical experts from the Department of Veterans Affairs blamed one botched surgery after another on a lone podiatrist. They said Thomas Franchini drilled the wrong screw into the bone of one veteran. He severed a critical tendon in another.
In 88 cases, the VA concluded, Franchini made mistakes that harmed veterans at the Togus hospital in Maine. The findings reached the highest levels of the agency.
“We found that he was a dangerous surgeon,” former hospital surgery chief Robert Sampson said during a deposition in an ongoing federal lawsuit against the VA.
Agency officials didn’t fire Franchini or report him to a national database that tracks problem doctors.
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