photo courtesy of morguefile image:25882:0::0

An email that was sent out by a Veterans Affairs Hospital Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Program Coordinator has created quite a problem. The email suggested that physicians stop diagnosing patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and consider a more short-term diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder instead, as a means of cost cutting.

Email quote, as reported by a military news report:

“Consider a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, r/o [rule out] PTSD. Additionally, we really don’t ... have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”

Aside from the unethical suggestion, the problem with this is that Adjustment Disorder does not provide veterans with benefits, whereas PTSD makes them eligible for healthcare benefits and in cases, retirement benefits as well.

The PTSD coordinator was not counting on a VA Hospital psychiatrist forwarding the email onto VoteVets.org, a veteran's advocacy group.

Brandon Friedman, Vice-chair of VoteVets.org said of the situation:

“They can say, ‘Ah, you’ve got something temporary, it’ll go away, so we don’t need to pay you for the rest of your life,’ ”

He said several veterans have told him they were diagnosed with adjustment disorder rather than PTSD, and that they felt they had received the wrong diagnosis.

“We hear anecdotal evidence all the time that VA is trying to cut costs by not diagnosing PTSD,” said Friedman, a former infantry officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “But we’ve never actually seen proof that it was being done in an organized way.”

Friedman also spoke highly of the VA and continued to remind the public that many great individuals work them and have helped enumerable veterans over the years. Even the VA Secretary James Peake acknowledged the isolated incident as inappropriate, claiming that the single responsible employee has been counseled.

The VA continues to operate under trust and transparency in order to provide healthcare benefits rightfully earned by all veterans. With over 230,000 employees, the miserly and uncaring judgement of one employee seemed to have gotten the best of them.