WASHINGTON — A team of senior Veterans Affairs officials will arrive at the Marion, Ill., VA Medical Center today after a new report that left Illinoisans in Congress calling the center's operations "appalling."

During a meeting in Washington on Wednesday with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois' two senators and two House members, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki pledged to send five top-ranking staff to investigate ongoing problems of care at the government-run facility and recommend changes.

The Marion VA hospital was widely criticized in an earlier report 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 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. "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."

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 the earlier report, inspectors still found inconsistencies in the tracking of deaths, medical procedures performed by employees without proper authorization and inadequate record keeping on patient care.

Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., pushed Wednesday for extending more federal whistle-blower protection to VA hospital employees to curb problems.

"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.