Charlie Bourg and Charlie Monroe first met in 2016 when the two veterans started a marathon protest outside Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center that evolved from demanding access to exercise equipment into a catch-all demonstration calling for better treatment for patients and staff.
Since then, “the Charlies” have been a fixture at the Spokane hospital, serving as de facto patient advocates and a sounding board for frustrated employees. So when reports of missing medications and myriad other errors emerged soon after the Department of Veterans Affairs launched a new computer system at the hospital in October 2020, they worried veterans could wind up dead, victims of a system critics say is being effectively beta-tested on live patients in the Inland Northwest.
“We were out hunting to find out who it was being injured,” Bourg said, “and one day I had to call Charlie and tell him, ‘Hey, I found the first guy.’ “
When Monroe asked who it was, Bourg delivered the news he had just received from his doctor.
“It’s me,” Bourg told his friend. “I’m dying.”
Bourg, 68, said doctors told him cancer had spread from his prostate to other parts of his body during a roughly yearlong delay in treatment, which he attributes to problems caused by the electronic health record system VA employees rely on to track patient data and coordinate care.
“At first, I didn’t believe him, and then it just took all the wind out of my sails,” said Monroe, 74, a Navy veteran. “I’m losing a brother. What else can I tell you? We’ve been together through thick or thin for the last seven years. It’s like taking my right arm off, that’s how close we’ve been going through all of this.”
Had the cancer been caught earlier, Bourg said an oncologist told him in the spring, it could have been treated before it metastasized to his abdomen and pelvis.
Instead, Bourg said, the cancer specialist could only guarantee he will live until Christmas, with his life expectancy after that dependent on the treatment he chooses. He takes pills to slow the cancer’s progress but opted against chemotherapy and other options after the doctor advised him he had no chance of beating the disease.
“They told me up front that, because it metastasized, anything they do is just going to make my quality of life go down,” Bourg said. “I’ll live a little longer, but my quality of life is going to go to hell.”
According to a letter from Mann-Grandstaff Director Robert Fischer to Sen. Patty Murray, Bourg’s primary care provider notified him Dec. 7, 2020, that a routine screening known as a prostate-specific antigen test indicated he may have prostate cancer, adding that the urology clinic was being alerted. The next day, a urology provider at Mann-Grandstaff opened the message and placed a “return-to-clinic order” in the new computer system — then barely a month old — to schedule a follow-up appointment.
The Spokesman-Review obtained the letter after Fischer sent it June 16, in response to an inquiry by the Washington Democrat’s office on Bourg’s behalf.
Since the message had been sent to the urology clinic by a primary care provider, the system automatically routed the order back to a “scheduling queue” in primary care, Fischer wrote. Because the urology provider didn’t work in primary care, the “ordering provider” field was left blank, and as a result no appointment was scheduled.
On April 9, 2021 — four months after the initial referral — Bourg had another appointment with his primary care provider, who noticed that he hadn’t seen a urologist and sent another message to the urology clinic. By then, Fischer wrote, the “system defect” had been corrected and the order was routed correctly, requesting an appointment to be scheduled May 5, 2021.
Bourg said he didn’t follow up sooner because he was told the urology clinic would review the test results and let him…
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