In mid-November, the Department of Veterans Affairs fired the head of the director of the Pittsburgh VA hospitals for her mishandling of a Legionaires’ disease. Terry Gerigk Wolf, who had been suspended with pay in June, was dismissed last month for “conduct unbecoming of a senior executive” following the outbreak that killed six patients and sickened at least 16 at VA facilities in Pittsburgh and suburban community near the city.

The investigation also exposed examples of wasteful spending .In a statement about the firing the VA said the action was about a “commitment to hold leaders accountable.”

The VA’s action over the Legionaires’ outbreak in Pittsburgh is appropriate and overdue. But it serves as a reminder of another, larger scandal in the VA health care system — the long wait times many veterans have endured after requesting an appointment with a doctor. Making this scandal worse than the callous treatment of veterans needing medical care was the gaming of the system by VA administrators who created fake waiting list reports that hid the extent of the problem from top department officials. Making that deceipt even more offensive, the falsified waiting lists allowed many VA administrators to earn cash performance bonuses.

With the VA action in Pittsburgh, attention should now be paid to how the VA deals with the waiting list scandal. Given the VA press release about holding people accountable, there should be broad and serious action taken against all those involved in gaming the system to get bonuses while forcing veterans to wait months to see a doctor.

At a congressional hearing in November, U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who serves as the head of House Veterans Affairs, said, “far too many senior VA leaders have lied, manipulated data, or simply failed to do the job for which they were hired.”

Miller is right. It would be one thing if the administrators had been forced to make veterans wait for medical treatment, but had also gone to department heads or Congress to report the problems. Instead too many created the bogus wait lists to hide the long waits — and to earn bonuses.

As of mid-November, there were 5,000 VA employees targed for possible disciplinary action and another 1,000 on a list for possible firing. But as of that period, only 42 had been targeted for disciplinary action related to patients dying due to long wait times and for lying about the wait times.

Miller added a concern that should be widely shared, saying, “I do not understand, in the wake of the biggest scandal in VA’s history, how only 42 employees have proposed for discipline.”

The VA defended what appears to be slow action on discipline, saying it wants to make sure action is done properly so it cannot be challenged by the terminated employees.

During the testimony before Miller’s committee, a Veterans Affairs deputy secretary said that of the four senior executives targeted for removal, two had retired and two had been fired. Some observers expect harsher punishment than an early retirement or firing — they suggested pensions should be lost. But the department deputy secretary noted that only “a criminal conviction for treason, sedition, aiding the enemy or terrorism” can cause a federal employee to lose earned benefits. Surely in this case, the actions were not just failure to preform a job properly, but the targeted employees actively cheated or gamed the system to hide their failures and earn bonus payments.

Congress passed a law to allow veterans to get medical care outside the VA system if the wait time is over 30 days or if they live more than 40 miles from the nearest VA medical center. The provision pays for the care received through the Veterans Choice program.

Since the scandal broke last summer, the wait list has reportedly dropped by 60 percent or more.