Salem, VA - Major changes are underway at Veteran’s Affairs hospitals nationwide after this week's inspector general's report showing serious training deficiencies. The report showed the deficiencies are putting thousands of vets at risk.

Over the past week, every VA facility and its support network have certified that all employees working with endoscopes are not only trained, but they can properly clean the scopes that are used in colonoscopies.

The VA is instituting industry-wide standard operating procedures relating to proper sterilization that are on file and readily available.  And to make sure compliance is in place there will be more spot inspections, which is not a big deal for the VA hospital in Salem.

There were no patient safety issues identified in last month's spot inspection. This VA patient, who only wants to be called "Sean" says for the most part, this VA is as good as it gets.

"I've been to almost every VA on the east coast and this is the best one around," “Sean” said.

And even though the Salem VA Hospital was not one of the deficient hospitals, there's still concern that veterans will forgo important preventive care because of the reports."

Dr. Dennis Weiserbs, with the Endoscopy Center of SW Va. said, "Overall the risk cited is about 1 and 1.8 million"

 Weiserbs contracts his services to the VA to help ease their workload and says he understands there could be a concern, but that concern needs to be kept in context.

"Millions of the procedures are being performed around the country and we do find colon cancer and perform other valuable services and I wouldn't want people to be deterred from doing the procedures because of the small risk," Weiserbs said.

The VA says that by the end of July, every facility that performs endoscopic procedures will be visited by a qualified inspection team. Any shortcomings will be the direct responsibility of facility leadership.

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