This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

  • Oopsie at the VA

    Oopsie at the VA

    The UK’s Daily Mail reports that 46-year-old Danny Dunn was pronounced dead last week at the Lexington, Kentucky VA hospital. His wife,Jennifer Dunn, who went to the hospital with him was informed of his demise;

    In accordance with her husband’s end-of-life wishes, Mrs Dunn made the decision to take him off life support, but she quickly discovered that Danny still had vital signs.

    As of Monday, the 46-year-old veteran was very much alive, and according to his wife, apparently growing stronger.

    ‘He squeezed my hand when I asked him to,’ she said. ‘He opened his eyes when I asked him to. And he grabbed my hand.’

    The Dunn family now want the ailing husband and father transferred to another hospital for treatment.

    There’s a video report at Lex18. I wouldn’t read too much into this or specifically blame the VA – it happens frequently around the world. I mean, we all remember reading the stories about people coming back to life in the morgue.

  • Steven Mickey Bunker; another VA fraud

    Steven Mickey Bunker; another VA fraud

    Steven Mickey Bunker

    MCPO Ret. In TN sends us a link from Myrtle Beach Online about 47-year-old Steven Mickey Bunker who defrauded the Veteran Affairs Department out of thousands of dollars for his phony disability. It’s not clear by reading the story whether he was really a veteran or not so I called the reporter who told me that she believed he had military records from service decades ago.

    Steven Mickey Bunker, 47, of Aynor was sentenced Tuesday to serve 24 months in jail, three years of supervised release and to pay $108,489.36 in restitution for veterans benefits he received while claiming he was paralyzed and unable to care for himself, according to a news release.

    […]

    Federal officials began investigating Bunker after a story in The Sun News was published in which Bunker said he was injured while serving in the military in Iraq. After the story was published, officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs were notified because the newspaper received so much negative feedback indicating that Bunker had made false statements concerning his injuries.

    At the time, Bunker was receiving veteran’s disability because he claimed that he was paralyzed and unable to walk, drive, eat or otherwise take care of himself without assistance, according to the release. Bunker’s disability included payment for others to take care of Bunker at his home.

    The VA also paid $40,000 for a car adapted to someone without use of their legs. He traded it in for a Hummer. But, of course, the investigation focused on the guns that were purchased for him by his parents (he was a felon). On top of all of that, he was a sex offender who didn’t register with local police.

    I guess the VA is too busy denying claims of real disabled vets to check on the phonies. But it was real veterans commenting on his bullshit article that busted him – you guys on your stolen valor patrols.

  • VA all about it’s employees not Vets

    VA all about it’s employees not Vets

    It’s common to hear that the federal government is nothing more than a jobs program and that is evident at the hearings that are going on in Congress. Whistleblowers tell their supervisors about problems and solutions to those problems at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and those complaints fall on deaf ears. The Washington Times reports on the hearings from last night;

    Whistleblowers, meanwhile, described important claims documents set to be shredded, a culture of ignorance and retaliation among managers, and pressure to quickly get through the backlog, which meant some veterans likely got shut out of benefits while others may have scammed the system. All the while, appeals have shot up.

    “These are veterans. I mean, somebody would be asleep at the wheel not to realize these things were going up,” said Ronald Robinson, a senior veterans service representative, former Army first sergeant, and one of three whistleblowers to testify.

    In one dramatic moment, committee Chairman Jeff Miller, Florida Republican, posted a handwritten note one of his staffers had seen on a site visit to Philadelphia in which a top regional VA executive had written that committee investigators were to be ignored, and that singled out known whistleblowers.

    Supervisors were more interested in “making numbers” than caring for veterans. At Stars & Stripes they report that their focus on “making numbers” actually made clearing the backlog fall behind further;

    The VA claimed last year it cut the number of disability and pension claims languishing for more than two years to just 1,258, but in reality the department wrote off more than 7,800 cases without making final decisions on granting benefits, the IG found.

    The VA has struggled publicly for years with its benefits backlog, but the manipulation that was disclosed Monday by investigators and heard before the House Veterans Affairs’ Committee suggests new depths of dysfunction and wrongdoing in the Veterans Benefits Administration, which accounts for half of the VA’s total responsibilities.

    And the VA did such a good job at protect that agency’s employees jobs, they all got bonuses;

    The list CBS News obtained from the House Veterans Affairs Committee shows $2.8 million in bonuses going to senior Veteran Affairs executives, with several going to officials in charge while care was delayed for veterans.

    Firing Shinseki was a good start, but the whole culture at the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to be changed and they need to clean house.

  • American Legion steps into the breach

    We’ve been talking about the failures in the system at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and of course, talking isn’t what gets help to veterans. The Associated Press reports that the American Legion has stepped up to fill the gap between veterans and their access to care by opening “crisis centers” across the country;

    “This is not extra, this is what is supposed to be happening,” [Verna Jones, director of the American Legion’s Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Division] said.

    On the first day the Legion’s crisis center team arrives in a town, they typically hold a town-hall meeting, where they take questions from veterans – sometimes, the head of the local VA is there to answer as well. In the days following, veterans come to the Legion post and talk to counselors, who assess the best way to tackle a given problem, be it benefits, retroactive payment, scheduling a doctor’s appointment or enrolling a veteran in the VA’s system for the first time.

    That’s why they call them Veterans’ Service Organizations. Many of you have complained that the legion and the VFW are just veterans’ bar where old old guys go to relive their glory days and tell war stories, but this is an example of what they really do on a national level. I just paid up my lifetime membership in the last few weeks and it’s specifically related to the Legion’s response to the VA’s failures.

    I’m not saying that you have to run out and get yourself a membership, I’m just asking that you view the American Legion and the VSOs differently, as I’ve done over the last several years.

  • Vet dies at VA hospital waiting for an ambulance

    Vet dies at VA hospital waiting for an ambulance

    ABC News reports that at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque a veteran collapsed in the cafeteria and died while he waited a half-hour for an ambulance to take him the five-hundred yards to the Emergency Room;

    Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said.

    Staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday, she said. “Our policy is under expedited review,” Brown said.

    That policy is a local one, she said.

    The man’s name hasn’t been released.

    All it would have taken is one hero to whisper “fuck this” under his breath and pushed the dude a few hundred yards. Could they have saved him? I don’t know, but you’d think that someone would have tried instead of hiding behind a policy. If they had tried to get him to the emergency room, we probably wouldn’t have heard this story.

    Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College, said the Department of Veterans Affairs is a large bureaucracy with various local policies like the one under review in Albuquerque.

    Although the agency needs to undergo reform, Landy said it’s unfair to attack the VA too harshly on the recent Albuquerque death because it appears to be so unusual.

    “I think we have to be careful,” he said. “Let’s not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism.”

    Yeah, that’s reason to not beat up on them – because they’re pretty well beat up already.

  • A Slightly Late Appointment

    Doug Chase was a Vietnam vet.  Unfortunately, in 2011 he became seriously ill.

    He lived in the greater Boston metro area.  Originally, he was being seen by doctors  in Boston.  But the Bedford VAMC was closer, so he tried to move his care to that facility.

    That request was made in 2012.

    Two weeks ago, Chase got a notice from the VA telling him he could schedule an appointment with a primary care physician.  There was just one problem.

    Chase had died in August 2012 – nearly two years ago.

    It gets even better.  When Chase died, his wife applied for VA funeral benefits.  The application was denied – according to his wife, because he’d never been treated at a VA hospital.

    There’s more info at the link.  It’s worth reading – unless you’re having blood pressure or anger-management issues today.

    It’s not a resource problem at the VA, folks.  And it’s not a medical problem, either.

    It’s a priorities, culture, and management problem.

  • Proctor & Gamble’s Bob MacDonald to be nominated for VA job

    Proctor & Gamble’s Bob MacDonald to be nominated for VA job

    Robert-McDonald

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which reports that the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble and West Point graduate, Bob McDonald, will be President Obama’s nominee to fill the Secretary’s chair at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs;

    The un­or­tho­dox pick of a retired corporate executive whose former company produces iconic household products such as Tide detergent and Charmin toilet paper — rather than a former military general — underscores the serious management problems facing the agency charged with serving more than 8 million veterans a year. On Friday, White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors submitted a report to the president finding “significant and chronic system failures” and a “corrosive culture” at the Veterans Health Administration, which has come under fire for skewed record-keeping in an effort to cover up the long waits it has imposed on former soldiers seeking medical care.

    In recent years, the job of VA secretary has been filled by retired generals, medical professionals or politicians. McDonald’s background is a significant departure, though he and his wife have deep family ties to the military. McDonald graduated in the top 2 percent of his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and served in the Army for five years, achieving the rank of captain in the 82nd Airborne Division before taking an entry-level job at P&G.

    Well, he can’t do any worse than the last guy, I’m sure. From everything that I’ve read about him, he fundamentally changed P&G and dragged it into the 21st century. If the Senate will give him the tools, maybe he can do the same thing for the VA. We’ll see, I guess.

  • And In the VA News Department . . .

    . . . here are three more items.  And, unfortunately, they’re not “good news” stories.

    • Two more senior VA officials have resigned. The current VA Undersecretary for Health, Dr. Robert Jesse, and the VA General Counsel, Will Gunn, have resigned. This means that the VA Secretary, five of the VA’s Assistant Secretaries, and 2 of the VA’s Undersecretaries have resigned recently. It won’t fix the problems in that agency – but maybe it’s a start.
    • I say maybe because the VA still seems to be in denial regarding the seriousness of its internal problems. The Office of Special Counsel released a report two days ago that, in essence, says the VA still doesn’t realize how serious its problems are. According to the OSC, VA senior leadership continues to use the “harmless error” excuse in ways that defy logic and which ignore “the severity of systemic and longstanding problems.” The OSC also indicated that it has “50 pending disclosure cases alleging threats to VA patient health and safety, and another 60 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers in the department.
    • And, finally:  another whistleblower has come forward from the Phoenix VAMC. Along with corroborating previous whistleblower reports, this individual alleges personal knowledge that at least 7 veterans died while awaiting care on the Phoenix VAMC’s “secret waiting list”.  She further alleges that there was a management-directed effort to hide excessive waiting times, as well as a concerted effort to manipulate records to cover up the fact that people had died while awaiting care.

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: resources are NOT the underlying problem at the VA. Leadership and priorities are the problem, along with a poor organizational culture.

    The former can be fixed relatively easily. The latter, unfortunately, will IMO likely take at least a decade to change.

     

    Hat tip to the Army Times for the above links.