MARION - It will be next month before a detailed investigation into the surgical department at the VA Medical Center in Marion is made public.

Choosing his words carefully, Dr. David Daigh, assistant inspector general for healthcare inspection for the office of the Inspector General with Veterans Affairs in Washington, said he doesn't anticipate the publication of the report before January.

"Our report will lay out a number of issues," Daigh said. "But I'd really rather not comment any further."

Daigh said full disclosure of the investigation conducted by the Office of the Inspector General will be made available to the public via the Internet at http://www.va.gov/oig.

"There is still data to look through and people to talk to," he said.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin spokeswoman Christina Mulka said the completion date and subsequent release of information from the investigation is "later than what the senator had hoped, but he is looking to see it through."

Mulka said Durbin expects to be briefed by the OIG before the report is made public. He will then follow up with his own take on the investigation in the form of a press release.

Mulka added that Durbin's office continues to receive phone calls from former employees and patients of the Marion facility, albeit at a slower pace than was the case in September, October and November.

An investigation into the Marion hospital by the OIG was requested by the House Veterans Affairs Committee, as well as by a number of Congressmen.

The investigation was necessitated by the fact that the National Surgeon Quality Improvement Program's investigative team within the VA had suspended inpatient surgeries at the Marion facility in late August.

It was learned that patient deaths had spiked at the hospital in the last year and that former surgeon Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who was first hired to work at Marion in January of 2006, was at least partly responsible for a number of the deaths. Veizaga-Mendez had been barred from practicing in Massachusetts. Earlier this fall, his privileges were suspended in Illinois, too.

As the investigation progressed, the privileges of three additional surgeons at Marion were restricted, while former managers at the Marion facility, including director Robert Morrel, were reassigned to other facilities.

Now, the hospital's hiring practices have been called into question. VA Acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield promised both Durbin and Sen. Barack Obama that Marion employees who would like to offer comments could do so without fear of retribution. To date, however, few employees have come forward and none have spoken to the media.

john.homan@thesouthern.com

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