WICHITA — A Veterans Affairs regional office in Kansas listed erroneous medical conditions for three dozen patients who were appealing rejected claims — an apparent effort to speed up the review process that might have had the opposite effect, government investigators found.
In a report released Tuesday, the VA’s inspector general’s office said managers instructed staff at the Wichita facility to enter the same “placeholder” diagnostic code for a specific bone infection on 36 appeal claims. None of the 36 patients actually had the listed ...