CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease/
One of the leaders of a Gulf War veterans group says panicked veterans from Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming have contacted the group about the error.
Denise Nichols, the vice president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, says the VA is blaming a coding error for the mistake.
Letters dated Aug. 12 were intended to notify veterans who have Lou Gehrig’s disease of disability benefits available to them.
Calls to the VA were not immediately returned Monday.
Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, is a rapidly progressive disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary muscles.
Yeah….I know what you’re thinking.
uhm prolly not what you are thinking
i’m thinking they are using windows……………..
This is the health care Obama wants to give everyone.
The VA is referring to a medical coding error pertaining to ICD-9 diagnosis codes. It’s not software related, if you believe what they say. Probably human error because medical coding is cannot be generated by machines. The (ICD-9) DX code for Lou Gehrig’s disease is specifically “335.20,” which gives victims of this disease assured benefits under Medicare/Medicaid. I guess the VA handles this diagnosis the same way.
The specter of the Bush years is still deep in most departments.
#2: deowll…
A twelve day lag between making a clerical error and fixing it is not something the current Health Care System does well. But your answer reveals more about you than the VA’s error recovery process.
I’d bet you were one of those decrying “How in God’s name can we expect a Health Care System from a government that can’t even run a Cash For Clunkers program?” Never mind that C4C hit all its design goals in four days, initially. 86 days ahead of schedule. So successful, so good, so beneficial that they extended it because it worked soooooo well.
Simple error, just like the spelling of Lou’s name in the headline. 😉
[Sorry…though I had fixed that – ed.]
#5 buzz
Well, lets see. Goals: increase sales at American auto manufacturers.
Results: Increased sales at all manufacturers that sell cars that qualify. Mostly foreign cars benefited but the Americans got a boost too.
Other Results: Took 750000 less efficient cars off the road. Could drive up the cost of used cars. Caused many people who were holding back and saving money to decide to purchase. And like every artificial boom will be followed by a crash. When will we learn that you can’t save the economy by creating booms?
Here’s an interesting tidbit found here
http://tinyurl.com/lafgf6
The total medical regulations in the US today measure approximately (my estimate) 200,000 pages (110,000 of it just for Medicare) in length. I compared this to a manual I use at work called the DCAA Contract Audit Manual. Volume 1 is 1.5 inches thick at 887 pages long. The book has dimensions of 4.5 inches wide by 7.5 inches long. If we were to print out the whole of the medical regulatory body in the United States today into a single book with those dimensions, the book would stand 28 feet tall, 15.5 feet of it being made up of just Medicare regulation. At 2 pounds per book, this stack of regulations would weigh 450 pounds. The total volume of all these regulations is 6.56 cubic feet or the equivelent[sic] 49 gallons of water.
How can we possibly have a free market if doctors and hospitals are required to comply with a 28 foot tall, 450 pound document?
How, indeed.
#6, #4 Aaaaahahahahaha. How long will you be using that as an excuse, 4 more years?
As long as it will take him to answer the question as to why he would let 10 strangers die in place of his wife.
Dear Veteran
You were recently informed that you ere suffering a fatal neurological disease, ALS. Please be advised that you do NOT have ALS, better known as Lou Gherig’s disease.
Today you are the luckiest men in the world.
Sorry.
The Veteran’s Administration
PS: Error-free ball is hard.
I wonder if this is more evidence of Vivek Kundra’s special expertise.
#9, Loser,
You still didn’t answer why you let my father die.
Your post on Medicare Regulations is just more bullshit. I notice your “blog” comment post your linked to didn’t source his estimate. Here are all the regulations.
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/regsguidance.asp
BTW, our local 50 bed hospital has quite the stack of regulations, policy guidelines, and procedures. So does the hospital in the nest town and the next town. And the next town. If you add up every hospital in America you will get quite the stack of regulations, policies, and procedures.
Most of them could easily be substituted in any other hospital with only very minor wording changes. They all contain sections on Medicare too. Maybe that is where your link gets his idea that there are so many pages on Medicare.
But then you have so seldom showed any intelligence at details.
Coding error, eh?
“I always mess up some mundane detail.” – Michael Bolton