Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki reacted Wednesday to his agency’s Office of Inspector General report on systemic problems with veterans’ access to medical care, calling its findings “reprehensible.”
“I respect the independent review and recommendations of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) regarding systemic issues with patient scheduling and access,” Shinseki said in a statement. “I have reviewed the interim report, and the findings are reprehensible to me, to this Department, and to Veterans. I am directing that the Phoenix VA Health Care System (VAHCS) immediately triage each of the 1,700 Veterans identified by the OIG to bring them timely care.”
The OIG report found that 1,700 veterans were left off the official patient waiting list at a Phoenix VA facility and that the average wait time for a veteran’s first medical appointment at the facility was 115 days — 91 days longer than the hospital reported. It also determined that 84 percent of patients waited more than 14 days for an appointment, which was the maximum window for an appointment recommended in the VA’s own guidelines.
“We will aggressively and fully implement the remaining OIG recommendations to ensure that we contact every single Veteran identified by the OIG,” Shinseki said in the statement. “I have directed the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to complete a nation-wide access review to ensure a full understanding of VA’s policy and continued integrity in managing patient access to care. Further, we are accelerating access to care throughout our system and in communities where Veterans reside.”
Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Shinseki’s resignation as allegations of mistreatment at VA facilities came to light in recent weeks. President Barack Obama called the OIG interim report’s findings “deeply troubling.”
THIS IS A HORRENDOUS PROBLEM - but it is also a long standing one - It goes way way back - ask vets from every era since WWII who have had to use the VA system & they will tell you of long waits & limited availability of state-of-the-art care.
Which is why I do not understand veterans groups adhering to this (much?) less than functional VA system. I briefly worked in the VA system, and it is not ideal, to say the least. Why not dismantle it, and fold it into ACA?
You mean so that, for instance, low-income veterans can be completely left out in states with republican governors?
Snark aside, our current civilian health care system has lots of big holes in it. Dropping millions of additional patients into it, and either building new hospitals and medical centers or closing the VA ones and reopening them as public hospitals would be a huge mess. Not to mention the odds of transferring even the current VA level of funding to the new system to pay for it (much less the $20-50B additional every year needed as a result of our most recent set of wars) with republicans in charge of the House.
Maybe once we’ve got the civilian side or or less in order, we could see about transferring veterans. But doing it now in response to a scandal would be a recipe for even more scandals. Start by fixing (and properly funding) what we’ve got.
Now to work on the systematic problems facing veterans along with the institutional issues of a lack of resources and indifference from Congress.
First order of business should be the cleaning out of the middle level managers and system of favoritism and nepotism. If Congress finds the time some oversight would be helpful. Feeding the war machine requires paying attention to the service members.
I can’t help but wonder how many letters, emails, phone calls McCain and Flake got about the long waits before the whistleblower came forward. You can’t tell me they didn’t know about this. You can’t tell me vets didn’t call their elected reps about this. I think these two fools know how they voted on additional funding for the VA in view of the huge influx of additional troops coming into the system and the fact that PTSD was finally officially recognized as legit. These guys are trying to cover their own butts by throwing Shinseki under the bus. McCain has hated him since he said we would need 300,000 troops in Iraq before the invasion. They hate him because he was right then and they threw him under the bus. Any honor McCain had is gone.