u/_iQlusion

I'm taking the Practicum right now and I have to say this course has become nothing but an AI Slop Fest.

Most of the other students projects are on AI. Lots of the other students projects and reports are written by AI. Many are using AI to write their responses to other students weekly video updates. The staff is using AI in their messages on ED discussion. Staff using AI to evaluate reports. I had some concerns I brought up in a private post and staff responded with a lengthy AI riddled reply. It came off very dehumanizing. Oh the cherry on top was getting accused of AI usage in my project by an AI detector that itself uses AI (the fucking irony).

Besides that my first two progress reports were graded by Professor Ahamad and it was very apparent he very hastily read them or skipped most of the content. The comments he left made no sense or were completely and clearly contradicted by content in my report. At least he didn't use AI like the other staff when he reviewed my reports.

I sent a lengthy message to staff (over a thousand words) outlining and citing the professors comments and where my report either did exactly what he said it wasn't doing or how his comments made no sense given what my project was about. Professor Ahamad responded, double downed, and once again just left more generic criticism that were once again clearly just not accurate. He wouldn't cite a single thing from my work or point to anything specific. Just vague contradictions.

I had also complained that we couldn't incorporate the feedback in our next report because they were graded late. Professor Ahamad responded with this gem:

> When you deliver a program at scale at the cost we do, it is not possible to provide immediate feedback.

So apparently this class is just AI slop and ran cheaply.

For what it's worth this is my second masters in engineering, my first was at a similarly ranked institution. So I have some experience with graduate classes.

I have lived in several cities and states and have always used the VA for my medical treatments, but I have never had to deal with the level of systemic failure that I am currently experiencing at the Columbus, OH clinic. The Patient Advocates at this location are doing the opposite of advocating, and the Community Care team is operating with gross incompetence.

The issues began when I needed specific testing done that the VA cannot perform in central Ohio, resulting in a referral to Community Care. The Community Care team informed me they only partner with a single provider for this test in the greater Columbus area. They claimed they sent the order to the testing lab and told me to wait a full week before even attempting to schedule. This felt like an absurd delay for an order that had allegedly already been transmitted. After waiting a week, I spent the next two weeks leaving multiple unanswered voicemails with the lab. When I asked Community Care for assistance, they simply stated they couldn't get through either and told me to keep waiting. Out of frustration, I contacted the lab's regional office, which confirmed the lab should be returning calls within 48 hours and promised to intervene. When someone from the local lab finally called me, they revealed they had never received the order. I went back to Community Care, but they refused to email the order, even though the lab stated email was preferred, and insisted they could only fax it again. After multiple rounds of back and forth involving the lab's regional manager and local lab staff, it turned out this lab location does not even perform this type of test. This completely unnecessary runaround delayed my medical testing by an entire month. Remarkably, Community Care then managed to find another lab to handle the test, completely contradicting their initial claim that only one provider was available.

Because Community Care did absolutely nothing to resolve this loop other than repeatedly refaxing a dead order, I reached out to the Patient Advocate office. I initially got through to an advocate (which turns out to be a stroke of luck), whom I will call DA, who took my complaint and promised to look into it. After that call, DA and the rest of the Patient Advocate office completely never followed up with me. I left subsequent voicemails to get an update on the unresolved Community Care issues, but my voicemails were entirely ignored.

Later, I also began experiencing severe issues with my primary care doctor. She is grossly incompetent, and I do not say that lightly. My wife is a board certified internal medicine physician, just like my PCP. I also caught her lying to my face, which prompted me to request a new primary care physician. I tried contacting the Patient Advocate office again to initiate the swap, but my calls went to voicemail. After multiple days of unreturned messages, I finally caught DA on the phone again. When I complained that no one had ever followed up regarding my previous Community Care issues, DA shocked me by stating that their office does not follow up with patients to see if issues are resolved. Instead, they simply reach out internally to the department in question, take that department’s word for it, and close the file. I asked her to clarify this, pointing out that it is impossible to call yourself a Patient Advocate if you never actually confirm a resolution from the patient’s perspective. She reassured me that was the policy of their office. This means the Columbus office has absolutely no idea if veteran issues are actually being resolved. DA then told me someone would contact me to schedule an appointment with a new primary care doctor, and promised her supervisor would call me back. Neither of those things happened.

After two more weeks of silence regarding my doctor change, I spent a month leaving about five separate voicemails with the Patient Advocate office. Not a single call was returned, and I was left without a new doctor. Fed up with being ignored, I called their office seven times in a row, hanging up and redialing every time it hit voicemail. This finally forced DA to answer the phone. When she picked up, she claimed to have absolutely no memory of ever speaking to me before. She then began acting incredibly childish, completely ignoring my questions about why a month's worth of voicemails went unanswered. She would either go completely silent on the line for minutes at a time or abruptly change the subject. She refused to acknowledge any dysfunction within her office and stated she would just request the doctor change again, adding that her supervisor would only call me back if she felt it was warranted.

I have never dealt with this level of bureaucratic failure in my life. I am deeply concerned about how the patient advocate office is operating. What should my next steps be an OIG complaint or something else?