Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

I get tired of bashing the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but they keep asking for it. From the Stars & Stripes comes the story of a slide presentation to train VA employees on how to deal with veterans seeking help. The slide presentation was entitled “What to Say to Oscar the Grouch – Dealing with Veterans During Town Hall Claims Clinics”.

About a dozen slides include pictures of the misanthropic Muppet in the can he calls home. In one, a sign reading “CRANKY” hangs from the rim. In another, Oscar’s face is flanked by the words “100% GROUCHY, DEAL WITH IT.”

The presentation includes tips on how to tell if a claimant is nearing an “outburst,” including being accusatory, agitated, demanding, or unfocused. One section on dealing with angry claimants is titled “Don’t Get in the Swamp With the Alligator.”

If the stress of dealing with angry claimants is overwhelming, the employees are instructed to take a break.

That’s a good way to stay out of the swamp, there VA. If I seem a little touchy, maybe we should hear what a veteran who watched the presentation says;

Christian DeJohn, 45, a VA employee who attended the training, said the content stunned him. DeJohn, an Army veteran who served in Bosnia, said the message seemed to be that veterans are irritable and potentially dangerous.

“For a long time, there was a stereotype of Vietnam veterans, that they’re mentally unstable and violent, bitter, angry, resentful,” he said. “I feel like this is perpetuating some of the worst stereotypes of veterans.”

I’m thinking that is because too many VA employees in the upper echelon don’t understand their clientele. In case someone from the VA reads this and they’re planning on making their next slide show, I wouldn’t appreciate being portrayed as Bert, Ernie, The Count, Big Bird or any other Muppet character. How about using real people in your slide show? Hows that? Dingus.

Just in time for the President’s address to the American Legion, the Associated Press reported the news that the Veterans’ Affairs Department Office of the Inspector General couldn’t find any veterans who died while they were waiting for care from the VA hospital according to the ;

Government investigators found no proof that delays in care caused veterans to die at a Phoenix VA hospital, but they found widespread problems that the Veterans Affairs Department is promising to fix.

The AP changed their headline after the president’s speech to the American Legion from this;

To this;

By the way, the president used that little Associated Press headline in his little talk yesterday – that they couldn’t find any dead vets – to prove that he’s getting an undeserved bad rep in the veteran community.

At this point, if the VAOIG told me that water is wet, I wouldn’t believe them. They won’t rid their roles of phonies, like Joe Cryer, they won’t even bounce the list of DOD’s POW/MIA office off of their own lists. Every day, it seems, we read about a new phony who jumped in line ahead of legitimate veterans. Why should we start believing them now?

Apparently, we shouldn’t believe them, or at least we shouldn’t believe the media filter that is protecting them. If you read the Washington Post today, after the President’s speech at the American Legion Convention it says;

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ watchdog confirmed Tuesday that numerous veterans died after receiving poor care in a VA hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., but stopped short of substantiating widely reported allegations that at least 40 veterans died while awaiting care.

The VA inspector general’s office said in a report that it reviewed the records of 3,409 veterans and found 45 cases where patients experienced “unacceptable and troubling lapses” in care. Of those, 28 experienced long delays in care, and six died, the report said. Seventeen other patients experienced care that “deviated from the expected standard independent of delays,” and 14 of them died, the IG found.

On page ii of the executive summary of the report (pdf) it says;

The patient experiences described in this report revealed that access barriers adversely affected the quality of primary and specialty care at the PVAHCS. In February 2014, a whistleblower alleged that 40 veterans died waiting for an appointment. We pursued this allegation, but the whistleblower did not provide us with a list of 40 patient names. From our review of PVAHCS electronic records, we were able to identify 40 patients who died while on the EWL during the period April 2013 through April 2014. However, we conducted a broader review of 3,409 patients identified from multiple sources, including the EWL, various paper wait lists, the OIG Hotline, the HVAC and other Congressional sources, and media reports.

OIG examined the electronic health records (EHRs) and other information for the 3,409 veteran patients, including the 40 patients reflected above in PVAHCS’s records, and identified 28 instances of clinically significant delays in care associated with access to care or patient scheduling. Of these 28 patients, 6 were deceased. In addition, we identified 17 care deficiencies that were unrelated to access or scheduling. Of these 17 patients, 14 were deceased. We also found problems with access to care for patients requiring Urology Services. As a result, Urology Services at PVAHCS will be the subject of a subsequent report. The 45 cases discussed in this report reflect unacceptable and troubling lapses in follow-up, coordination, quality, and continuity of care.

Basically, they found less than forty, but they found more than the zero that the Associated Press (and the President) reported yesterday. By the way, the Army Times says the same thing as the AP said yesterday;

From our buddy, Pete Hegseth, at Concerned Veterans For America;

“Concerned Veterans for America is disappointed, but not surprised, to see the Office of the Inspector General’s report confirm what we already knew about the systemic problems and manipulation of records in the Phoenix VA Health System. Following this scathing report, we hope that VA leadership, including former Phoenix VA Health Care System Director Sharon Helman, will finally be held accountable and fired for the gross mismanagement and falsification of records that the IG’s report confirmed occurred on her watch.

“It is now solely up to President Obama and Secretary McDonald to use the firing authorities recently granted in the VA reform law to make sure that those responsible are held to account and that the VA’s systemic culture of corruption comes to an end. Without that sense of accountability, veterans will continue to be denied the care they have earned. Concerned Veterans for America will continue to monitor the situation long after it has faded from the headlines to make sure that the administration follows through on its promise to our nation’s heroes.”

The President signed what is being called a “landmark” bill to overhaul the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, according to Stars & Stripes;

“This will not and cannot be the end of our effort,” Obama said. “Implementing this bill will take time. It will take focus from all of us.”

The massive reform package has been a rare instance of bipartisanship in Washington and won overwhelming support in both chambers of Congress in late July, just three months after delays in veteran health care exploded into a national scandal. It dramatically expands veteran access to private care, adds medical staff and facilities, and streamlines the firing of VA executives found to be incompetent or guilty of manipulating patient data.

“It’s a good deal,” Obama said. “This bill covers a lot of ground.”

Everything this President does is somehow “landmark” and I’m not sure why they signed it at Fort Belvoir, an Army base which has nothing to do with the VA. Of course, it’s really not going to change much about the way the VA is run. From another S&S link;

The bill includes a compromise by House and Senate lawmakers allowing the Department of Veterans Affairs to continue handing out up to $360 million in employee performance awards each year as it attempts to overhaul its health care system and ease chronically long patient wait times.

So, basically, the bill rewards VA employees by pushing their workload off on civilian hospitals and continuing their bonuses.

Pete Hegseth, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, issued the following statement in reaction:

“Today is a victory for veterans. The VA reform bill President Obama signed into law today brings the first major civil service reform since the 1980’s. But while the key provisions in this legislation that hold VA executives accoundailytable and grant veterans’ choice for private sector care are long overdue, they are only the first step. CVA fought long and hard for these reforms, and it’s important to remember that this historic legislative compromise happened in spite of this administration’s efforts rather than because of them.

“The fact is that there was little appetite from those on the stage today for the reforms that are the core of this legislation. It is telling that rather than pausing for victory laps, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller—who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for his leadership on this legislation—and CVA, were in the field today making sure that the calcified bureaucracy at the center of this scandal as well as the politicians who failed to prevent it, are held to account.

“The President has no more room to shirk responsibilities or shift blame. How effective these reforms will be now rests squarely on the shoulders of this administration. CVA will be keeping a close eye on how these reforms are implemented and enforced to ensure that Congress’ intent is met and that President Obama and VA Secretary McDonald use these significant tools of reform so that the betrayal we have seen is never repeated.”

The Washington Times reports that they got their hands on a Freedom Of Information Act report that the Obama transition team received when they took the reins of government five years ago which warned that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs had trouble with wait times for patients. That the data which was being used to pay executive bonuses was easily manipulated.

“VA has been trying — and failing — to replace its outpatient scheduling system since 2000, wasting nearly $130 million in the process,” Rep. Jeff Miller, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told The Times when asked about the delays.

“Because VA acquisition officials have proven time and again they are simply too inept to guide the development of a new proprietary appointment-scheduling system in an expedient and cost-effective manner, department leaders need to look at adopting commercial technologies that are being used in the private sector,” Mr. Miller said.

Which is really no surprise. The VA and the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to transfer medical records between them electronically. How many billions have been wasted on that program? And that’s just transferring data – you know, something that we all do everyday.

The problem at the VA is the culture and the culture won’t change until they start throwing out the incompetent boobs at the lowest levels.