dr. deering or dr. thomas.ho orchestrated what appears to be a purposeful intent to deceive veterans, congress, and the american people? dr. deering? >> well, regarding the book, that -- from what i recall that was actually a sponsored training for coaching sessions. i wasn't involve with purchasing that book. the graph you're showing on the screen is part of our congressional briefing to our local delegates. there was no intent there to mislead anyone. we were trying to basically outline the framework of how we got to where we were in phoenix as part of mr. michaud's -- >> why would you do two different scales and put that together? it's misleading. if you use the same scale, the growth in the ftes and the number of visits is about the same. >> i appreciate that feedback. the intent was not to mislead. the -- >> what this intent to show there? >> the intent to show here is that we have had continued growth in the outpatient setting on number of visits coming into our facility over the last several years, and w

dr. deering, as you can see, the committee has a lot of whys. and since this problem has been brought to our attention. and as dr. huelskamp said, we want to get to the facts. not because we want to harass you, but but we need to understand the whys in order to help craft some policy that makes sense. for instance one of my puzzling whys has been this memo of 2010 that outlined all the scheduling problems. and i'd like to know if either of you or both of you maybe saw that memo and what happened next. >> i can answer first, congresswoman. that memo was signed and distributed prior to my tenure. it was in i believe april of 2010 when that memo was signed and i started in my position in 2011. i did not have awareness of it until we realized that we were having in the spring of this year that we were having significant issues away our system and started putting the pieces together. >> and my answer is similar. i came in to this position in 2012. prior to that, i worked as inpatient hospitalist. i ran the inpatient side of the hospital and country wo

dr. deering, thank you for attending. i would like to know if you're reached out to any of the whistleblowers about resolving their cases and if so, how many have you done? >> i have not cursorily reached out to any of the whistleblowers at the phoenix v.a. about their specific cases. >> would that be something that you ordinarily would do or what somebody else do that? >> i believe someone else is working with them on their cases. >> in a normal course -- i understand phoenix is somewhat of an anomaly. normally, would you be the one that would reach out to whistleblowers or? >> certainly, i have that other employees well brought up concerns. i work with him closely to address those. had an employee about two weeks ago send me a message on my personal cell phone saying she has concerns that she would like to discuss. to didn't feel safe talking them about work and i met her off campus to discuss those issues. >> have as -- has anybody advise you not to talk to whistleblowers? >> i have not. that the 290 three deaths have

dr. deering found on page 38 of your report regarding a veteran who died waiting for care.it's already been talked about this morning and in a staff briefing on the 4th. you stated that the veteran was seen by a urologist within three days of presenting to the e.r. so his case was not included in the 45 case reviews in the report. however, we have received notification from the oig yesterday stating that a mistake had been made and that this veteran was actually not seen after he was presented at the e.r., and after informing us of this delay, the oig still says that this delay in care did not contribute to his death. could you explain to me how the oig came to this conclusion? >> so the patient in question has bladder cancer, and had bladder cancer for many years. he arrived at the v.a. and was seen in the emergency room initially, and received a very reasonable emergency room evaluation. among his chief plants were that he had blood in his urine. he also had chronic -- he had rheumatoid arthritis and some other disabilities, including amputation of a leg. as a result of t