Austin, TX (Law Wire News) June 6, 2014
A whistleblower in San Antonio claims that he faced retaliation for asking questions, and managing attorney with Bertolino LLP speaks out on the issue. Brian Turner, an employee with the San Antonio North Central Federal Clinic, recently became concerned that the scheduling of veterans for their medical appointments was not being done in a straightforward and transparent manner, according to The Houston Chronicle on May 31, 2014. Instead, he believed the records were being manipulated to give the appearance of shorter wait times for men and women who desperately need care. When he questioned his superiors about the practices, he claims there was an effort to make the clerks take responsibility and state that the false entries were done in error due to lack of appropriate training while high-ranking officials maintained they had no knowledge of any problem. His curiosity not fulfilled, Turner eventually was told he just best stop asking questions, according to the Chronicle.
A scandal that started with the revelation that dozens of veterans died in the Phoenix area while waiting for appointments that were often many weeks or even months away has since grown into a nation-wide examination of what is going in all of our veterans’ hospitals. Tony R. Bertolino, managing attorney with the Texas law firm of Bertolino LLP, understands that the Phoenix cases gave others the confidence to step forward and share instances of similar fraud and negligence taking place at their locations. The firestorm over the matter has grown to such a level that the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, Eric Shenseki, was forced to submit his resignation to President Barack Obama in late May, according to Fox News on May 30, 2014. As his last act, he fired the top officials at the Phoenix office, according to Military.com.
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