WASHINGTON (AP) — Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would be granted more authority to fire or demote senior executives under a bill headed to the House floor. The measure comes as pressure builds on Capitol Hill to overhaul the beleaguered agency in response to allegations of treatment delays and preventable deaths.
The VA’s Office of Inspector General said late Tuesday the number of VA facilities being investigated nationwide for problems had expanded to 26. Acting Inspector General Richard Griffin told a Senate committee last week that 10 facilities were being investigated.
President Barack Obama has scheduled a meeting with Shinseki at the White House on Wednesday morning. Also present will be White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors, who was assigned to oversee a review of the VA health care system.
The House bill, being readied for a vote Wednesday, would target about 450 career employees at the VA who serve as hospital directors or executives in the agency’s 21 regions.
Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, sponsored the measure, saying VA officials who have presided over mismanagement or negligence are more likely to receive bonuses or glowing performance reviews than any sort of punishment.
The VA’s “widespread and systemic lack of accountability is exacerbating all of its most pressing problems,” including revelations that the department maintained secret waiting lists to cover up long delays in patient appointments and a mounting toll of preventable deaths of veterans, Miller said.
Miller accused the VA of a “well-documented reluctance to ensure its leaders are held accountable for mistakes” and said Congress has an obligation to “give the VA secretary the authority he needs to fix things. That’s what my bill would do.”
Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said the White House shares the goals of the House bill — to ensure accountability at the VA — but was concerned about some of the details.
The House legislation comes as Nabors prepares to travel to Phoenix to meet with staff at the VA office where the crisis began after allegations of delayed care that may have led to patient deaths and a cover-up by top administrators.
A former clinic director said that as many as 40 veterans may have died while awaiting treatment at the Phoenix hospital and that staff, at the instruction of administrators, kept a secret list of patients waiting for appointments to hide delays in care.
Investigators probing the claims say they have so far not linked any patient deaths in Phoenix to delayed care.
Nabors will meet Thursday with administrators in Phoenix, including interim director Steve Young, Carney said.
The current director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, Sharon Helman, has been placed on leave indefinitely while the VA’s inspector general investigates the claims raised by several former VA employees.
Shinseki and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday to discuss how the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments can improve interactions between their health records systems. The two Cabinet members said in a joint statement that the meeting was productive and said both men share the same goal: to improve health outcomes of active-duty military, veterans and beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, two Republican senators introduced legislation to prohibit payment of bonuses to employees at the Veterans Health Administration through next year. Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Deb Fischer of Nebraska said the VA should focus its spending on fixing problems at the agency, “not rewarding employees entrenched in a failing bureaucracy.” Burr is the senior Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and Fischer is on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The House passed a bill in February that would eliminate performance bonuses for the department’s senior executive staff through 2018.
Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, also called on Obama to back off plans to nominate Jeffrey Murawsky to replace the VA’s undersecretary for health care, Robert Petzel, who has stepped down. Murawsky, a career VA administrator, directly supervised Helman from 2010 to 2012.
The White House has said Obama remains confident in Shinseki’s leadership and is standing behind Murawsky’s nomination.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Republicans, as always, have it backwards. The VA doesn’t need more accountability. It needs more money.
Of course cheating is wrong and there’s no excuse for it. So Congress should avoid promoting it. Congress set the VA up for failure with a crushing workload, inadequate resources, and a regime of unattainable metrics.
Merit pay is like paying people to exaggerate their successes. Termination threats are like asking people to cover up their mistakes. Pay people a fair and adequate base salary. Hire enough of them to do the work. If you give people no incentive to say otherwise, administrators will be happy to explain why their doctors can’t see 30 patients an hour.
That the VA has problems has never been a question. Arizona is a retirement mecca for veterans. As such the VA facility in Phoenix is no doubt particularly challenged in funding and staffing. The “secret list” was more than likely a well intended form of triage. If the situation was in fact so dire (more than 40 deaths!), why didn’t the “former clinic director” take action while he had the power to effect change. Is it a coincidence that the timing of his release of this information comes with republican attempts to bolster their party’s chances in the upcoming midterm elections?
Just a question-why have a separate health care system for veterans? Why not provide all the VA-eligible folks and dependents with government-paid health insurance through the exchanges? There might be a need for clinics to treat specific service-related ailments like PTSD and for rehabilitation from combat injuries, but veterans with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. can be treated at a general medical facility.
Pay a fair and adequate salary? That is the problem, so we should give them more than the $700 million dollars the staff of ONE HOSPITAL earned over the last three years? That would solve the problem?
“Total compensation, records show, topped $700 million over the past three years and exceeded $240 million in 2013 alone. Salaries make up about half the Phoenix VA’s annual budget, with doctors and nurses making up just a quarter of the Phoenix VA staff.”
“Staff salaries, according to the records, reach as high as $357,528 for doctor executives and $147,724 for nurse staff. The average Arizona doctor makes just over half of what the top-paid Phoenix VA doctors make, according to federal stats.”
The problem with the VA is similar to most of the problem with Government agencies, the money goes into the pockets of the government employees and not to actually fund the purpose of the agency.
That’s one of the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on TPM, and that’s saying something. Yes, most funding at VA Medical Centers goes to pay for staffing the hospitals, the clinics, the Emergency Room, the counseling centers, the retirement home, the hospice. That does fund the purpose of the agency. Which is to provide medical services to veterans.
::Dumbass::