dr. roe, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i guess the direction i want to go is with dr. head and mr. tremaine. when you make an allegation, obviously you're not a team player right there. so what is it to lead me to believe that you're just not an incompetent employee. you're just a troublemaker. you don't want to work with a team. we've all been on the team before. and when you're looking, what's to make me -- because i've seen this happen before. where you -- how do i know dr. head is really a very good doctor? he just might not be very good so we move you out of the clinic and put you in a closet somewhere and essentially move you out of clinical care just to get you out of the way. and it's very hard to protect your reputation if you have two or three or four senior people ahead of you making the allegations. so how do you protect yourself on that, to follow up on miss rice's statements, how do you do that? how do i know you're not? >> well, my reputation speaks for itself. and my education clinical expertise and track re

. >> dr. roe you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. i guess the direction i want to go is with dr. head and mr. tremaine. when you make an allegation obviously you're not a team player right there. so what is it to lead me to believe that you're just not an incompetent employee. you're just a troublemaker. you don't want to work with a team. we've all been on the team before. and when you're looking, what's to make me -- because i've seen this happen before. where you -- how do i know dr. head is really a very good doctor? he just might not be very good so we move you out of the clinic and put you in a closet somewhere and essentially move you out of clinical care just to get you out of the way. and it's very hard to protect your reputation if you have two or three or four senior people ahead of you making the allegations. to follow up on miss rice's statements, how do you do that? hoe do i know how do i know you're not? >> well, my reputation speaks for itself. and my education clinical expertise and track record speaks for itself. a l

benishek was and i think dr. roe was getting at. i went through the list. i'm grateful it looks like we're getting justice for the whistle-blowers. that's one piece of this. accountability piece you talked about, the thing that troubles me most in the nine cases you listed, i may be wrong because there are summaries, but it appears only charles johnson at the columbia va actually led to changes in how business was done in a hydration practice that was wrong. am i wrong to assume -- because my concern on this is this is threefold. justice for the whistle-blower, accountability for the perpetrator, and improved quality of care to stop that because, really, when you adjudicated these things, all you gave them back what they should have had in first place. you don't get a pat on the back for doing the right thing. that's what it appears like we're asking for. look at us. we paid them back the money. you fired them incorrectly in the first place. i don't know in it is miss flanz or miss lerner, maybe we're talking to the wrong people for implementation of the ch

as dr. roe mentioned, ocla is meant to serve as a bridge between congress and the v.a., to help facilitate access to information that we as a legislative body request in our oversight role. since i've been in congress and a member of the veterans' affairs committee, all of four months, it is clear that more transparency is needed. let me give you a clear example of a pending request an unusually long unfulfilled request that is still yound standing. back in december, as part of the committee's continued investigation into malfeasance at the philadelphia r.o. we requested all complaints that have been filed at this location since 2008. late last year we were told the files were inboxes ready to be shipped to washington, d.c., for our review. it's now five months later and after numerous requests, we've only received a few of the files we requested. the inability of the v.a. to provide these documents is mind boggling. i don't know how else to describe it. the bottom line is, ignoring reasonable r

dr. muse or i would give up the fight. rep. roe: thank you, the three of you for being here and speaking doubt. i think it will help other people around the country to have the courage to stick their head up. i yield back. rep. coffman: thank you. mr. waltz you are recognized. rep. waltz: the v.a. can not provide the best care if there is a coulter of fear. since i have been here and i'm somewhat biased, this idea of coulter is never far from us. it is difficult. a week or so ago, we were on a field hearing on this very issue of over prescription of opiates and a whistleblower if you will, christopher kirkpatrick was one of the people who brought into peoples' attention. he was backed up by this. we have another whistleblower out to their whose medical record, a veteran, was looked into with a very clear example of trying to find a mental health issue to discredit them. it is so despicable because the very stigmas we are trying to overcome among mental health is used against the people were talking about it. this is a cancer and i