magazine mocking key obama administration officials. a develop story and our top story, about our veterans, our warriors and the quality of medical care that they receive. all week long we have been telling you about the hundreds of veterans in st. louis, possibly exposed to hiv and hepatitis because of dirty dental equipment. now we have got our hands on an internal memo from the va. it is meant to crack down on some questionable medical practices at some facilities. in the memo, it talks about patient care compromise, vets kept waiting for appointments, highlighting, inappropriate scheduling practices referred to as gaming strategies, a tactic that was, according to this document, used to improve customer service scores. and there is more, eight pages worth, in fact. pentagon correspondent barbara starr has been digging for us all morning. barbara, you had a chance to talk to the va. what can you tell us? reporter: we spoke to a top va official, mr. william
shownhart, the top official in charge of this. he s the man who has written this eight-page memo to va medical facilities saying cut it out, no more of these inappropriate scheduling practices. let me tell you that what he tells us is he wrote the memo not because he says he had any personal knowledge of these practices, but he wanted to write it proactively. he said, this is a proactive step to set the tone that there will be zero tolerance. but when you read the memo, he says it has come to his attention that, in fact, there are these inappropriate scheduling practices, these gaming strategies. what are we talking about? things like veterans who may not read the absolute fine print on their paperwork, maybe they don t read it and then their appointment gets canceled if they don t show up technically ten to 15 minutes before the appointment time at the doctor s. va cancels it and the statistics