The whistleblower who helped expose widespread fraud at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Hospital has released a book detailing her experiences.

In 2014, Paula Pedene, then a public information officer for the Phoenix VA, worked with Dr. Sam Foote to blow the whistle on the agency for fraudulently fudging patient waiting lists to make it appear that vets were being seen within the required time frame. The scandal led to the resignation of several VA officials, including the department's cabinet secretary Eric Shinseki.

Pedene’s book, A Sacred Duty: How a Whistleblower Took on the VA and Won, details how she discovered the agency’s practice of maintaining multiple waiting lists to hide actual wait times, her attempts to report it to authorities within the VA, and the retaliation she faced from higher-ups.

Pedene began working as the public information officer at the Phoenix VA Hospital in 1994 after a decorated career in the U.S. Navy was derailed by vision loss. While working in the director’s office, she began to notice inconsistencies in how the hospital handled waiting lists for veterans receiving care.

She sent letters to several high-ranking officials at the VA, including the Office of the General Counsel, the undersecretary for health, and even Secretary Shinseki.

“We were writing letters to all these people internally first to tell them, 'Look, here's what they're doing. Here's how it's working. You need to come in and investigate,'” Pedene told Phoenix New Times in a...

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