Late in the afternoon of December 4th of 2006, laboratory staff of the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health Services (VAPHS) based on an order from Dr. Mona Melhem, the associate chief of clinical services, a few minutes earlier – in less than three hours destroying a unique collection of legionella and other isolates that had been collected by two prominent infectious disease researchers over their nearly three decades of research.

So starts a report by the Science Sub Committee chaired by Congressman Brad Miller of the 13th District of North Carolina into a strand of legionella that was destroyed by the Pittsburgh VA and with it thirty years of research by Dr. Victor Yu and his partner Dr. Janet Stout.

This report and its conclusions began a series of events that climaxed with this news broken on in January by Walter Roche of the Pittsburgh Tribune about the same Pittsburgh VA.

A top Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs physician, who got her job back temporarily after congressional intervention, is about to be terminated from her position as the head of radiology in the Pittsburgh facility.

VA officials have issued a formal notice of termination effective Jan. 25 to Dr. Anna Chacko, who has been on administrative leave from the University Drive facility since October.

What, one might ask, does an investigation into a destroyed strand of legionella have to do with the firing of the chief of radiology at a hospital nearly two years later? In reality, the two probably have little do with each other, except in the mind of Congressman Brad Miller. Because Miller made a connection, the events of one lead directly to the events of the other.

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Dr. Anna Chacko

Dr. Chacko spent six years at Lahey Clinic in the Boston suburb of Burlington. When she was fired from there, security had to forcibly carry her out all while Dr. Chacko screamed

Kiss my big Indian Ass

(Dr. Chacko is of Indian descent)

After Lahey Clinic,  Dr. Chacko spent about a year at the Boston University until she was removed after complaints of sexual harrassment to the human resources department.

From there, Dr. Chacko moved to St. James Hospital in Butte, Mt. as head of radiology in July of 2007.  Dr. Chacko replaced the three radiologists there. The three radiologists, Drs. William Driscoll, Jesse Cole, and Dennis Wright, had a combined 70 years of service to St. James. Prior to her arrival, St. James CEO, James Kiser, often referred to the radiology department as its “savior” because its consistent seven figure bottom line profitability almost single handedly kept the entire hospital profitable.  Dr. Chacko left St. James fifteen months later in October of 2009, and she took all the new radiologists with her. In the interim, no less than four lawsuits were filed in which she was mentioned prominently. The radiology department, once the savior, was now deep in the red. In fact, the hospital was on the verge of collapse and they were about to default on lease payments for millions of dollars worth of radiology equipment that Dr. Chacko herself ordered.

Despite this, Dr. Chacko was able to land a plumb job as head of radiology at the Pittsbugh VA and started there in October of 2008.

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