WASHINGTON – A team of senior Veterans’ Affairs officials will arrive at the Marion, Ill. VA Medical Center Thursday to begin recommending changes following a new report on its operations, the results of which Illinoisans in Congress labeled "appalling."

During a meeting in Washington today with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois’ two senators and two House members, Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki pledged to send five investigators to examine ongoing criticisms of care at the government-run facility.

The Marion VA hospital was widely criticized for inadequate care that might have contributed to the deaths of nine veterans in 2007, and a VA inspector general’s report released Monday showed insufficient progress had been made in 2008 to clean up recurring issues. The Marion hospital is about 125 miles southeast of St. Louis.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. said at a news conference that Shinseki pledged to report back on the findings within six weeks.

The hospital underwent significant staffing changes in 2008 – the hospital’s director, chief of staff, chief of surgery and anesthesiologist all were removed – and Durbin warned more could be on the way out.

"There are changes in leadership that will take place immediately there," Durbin said. "There’s a team coming in from around the country, a quality management team from the highest level, to assess that hospital from top to bottom. The secretary has given us his assurance that he is going to take this as a matter of personal priority to him, as it should."

The hospital’s interim director, Warren E. Hill, was granted a transfer to a Wisconsin VA medical center and will step down in the coming days. James Roseborough, a former director of VA hospitals in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois, will take over Hill’s position.

Luke Stapleton, director of the VA’s Southeast network, will lead the assessment, a Marion hospital spokeswoman said.

While Monday’s VA report was not as critical of the hospital as in 2008, inspectors still found inconsistencies in the tracking of deaths, two medical procedures performed by employees without proper authorization and inadequate record keeping of patient care. The hospital also failed to implement some of the recommended changes outlined in the 2008 report.

Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., pushed Wednesday for extending more federal whistleblower protection to VA hospital employees to curb issues such as those at Marion.

"What I learned from Marion was there were a lot of people who knew what was going on and were just afraid to speak out" for fear of losing their jobs, Burris said. "The secretary was very upset and said he would look into this."

Major surgeries were suspended at the Marion hospital in September 2007, but Quinn said he would reach out to the Illinois community and its universities for help in re-establishing major surgeries at the rural medical center.

"We want to make sure Marion has top-notch health care for veterans, and if it’s not there, we will appeal to the people of Illinois to help provide that expert service," Quinn said. "If you have been on the front line defending our democracy, when you come home, you shouldn’t have to fight for decent health care."