I would like to thank Chairman Filner and Ranking Member Buyer for calling this important hearing to investigate the failure to comply with sterilization procedures at the John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis, MO.    

People in the armed services routinely risk their lives so that we do not have to live in fear, and yet because of medical negligence at the St. Louis VA Medical Center, many veterans are currently doing just that.  There are over 55,000 veterans living in my district, and it pains me to think that any one of them received a letter warning them that they may be infected with HIV, the Hepatitis B and C viruses or other blood-borne diseases from potentially contaminated  equipment used during dental treatment. 

According to best practices for infection control, sterilization, disinfection and cleaning of medical equipment and instruments, also known as reprocessing, should be performed in a centralized area.  However, over the course of a year, employees at the St. Louis center disregarded these guidelines.  And seemingly, no supervision was taking place to ensure the medical guidelines for centralized sterilization of medical instruments were being followed by the dental staff at John Cochran. 

On July 1st, I sent a letter to Secretary Shinseki on June expressing my sincere concern and frustration about the mismanagement at John Cochran and the risk of potential exposure to hundreds of veterans in my district.  In this letter, I asked the Secretary to immediately investigate and take steps to ensure that patient safety standards are upheld.  I also urged the VA Secretary to strengthen oversight of sterilization procedures and enhance regulations to protect our vets from infection.

I am pleased that the Secretary acted quickly to ensure health care workers are complying with effective sterilization processes.  Secretary of Health Robert Petzel’s call for an independent, national Administrative Investigation Board to see what went wrong here is a step in the right direction.  Re-training all hospital personnel and standardizing washing procedures is a step in the right direction.  Placing the Chief of Dental Services on administrative leave until the outcome of the investigation is determined is, again, a step in the right direction. 

But our efforts must not stop there.  The VA must also take steps to implement these changes agency-wide and restore our veterans confidence in the VHA.  I am sure we all remember the failure to sanitize colonoscopy equipment just a little over a year ago.  In addition, audits conducted by the Office of Inspector General in the past year have often found issues with sterile processing areas at other VA facilities.   The frequency of contaminated instruments cited in OIG reviews suggests an ongoing problem with equipment sterilization within the VA system.  Let us once and for all standardize cleaning practices throughout all medical departments and enforce compliance with regular audits at all VA Medical centers to take human error out of the equation.

After all our veterans have done for us, it is our responsibility to do all that is necessary to prevent this kind of occurrence from happening again. 

Again, I thank the Chairman for his leadership on this issue and hope that today’s testimonies will help us provide our veterans with the best care possible.