Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

Stars & Stripes reports that Ric Shinseki, the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, has announced that he won’t step down from the post, despite the fact that agency’s inability to service the population that it services is a national punchline.

[Shinseki] acknowledged he has work to do to rebuild the confidence of veterans.

Yeah, wave because that ship has sailed, Ric. Like the American legion commander said (from an Army Times article sent by Chief Tango)

But Dellinger said recent problems have changed the perspective of Legion officials toward Shinseki. He cited multiple recent scandals involving preventable patient deaths, controversy over executive bonuses, and a concern among Legion members that VA services are on the decline.

“Our veterans need to know that the VA health-care system is a safe place where they can receive treatment and feel assured that patient safety is a top priority,” he said. “Errors and lapses can occur in any system. But The American Legion expects when such errors and lapses are discovered, that they are dealt with swiftly and that the responsible parties are held accountable.

“This has not happened at the Department of Veterans Affairs. There needs to be a change, and that change needs to occur at the top.”

Republican Senators are calling for Shinseki to resign now;

“He needs to step down,” [Texas Senator John Cornyn] told reporters. “The president needs to find a new leader to lead this organization out of the wilderness, and back to providing the service our veterans deserve.”

In a Senate speech earlier in the day, [Kansas Senator Jerry Moran] said Shinseki seemed unwilling or unable to fix the department’s problems.

“Veterans are waiting for action and yet the VA continues to operate in the same old bureaucratic fashion, settling for mediocrity and continued disservice to our nation’s heroes,” Moran said. “There’s a difference in wanting change and leading it to happen.”

There’s no confidence to rebuild, Shinseki. Pack your bags. The American Legion’s call for his resignation was the final nail. I’ve said since the day he was nominated for the post that he is an incompetent boob, but even I didn’t realize the heights (or depths) of incompetent boobery he was able to reach. But everyone said that he’s a wounded veteran so he would know how to treat us – incompetent boobs might want to help, but they can’t help being incompetent boobs. Serious.

The folks at Concerned Veterans for America send us a heads up that other whistle blowers are coming forward to report that appointment data at the Veterans Affairs Department has been manipulated in places other than Phoenix, Arizona. For example, the Austin, Texas Statesman reports;

A Department of Veterans Affairs scheduling clerk has accused VA officials in Austin and San Antonio of manipulating medical appointment data in an attempt to hide long wait times to see doctors and psychiatrists, the American-Statesman has learned.

In communications with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a federal investigative body that protects government whistleblowers, the 40-year-old VA employee said he and others were “verbally directed by lead clerks, supervisors, and during training” to ensure that wait times at the Austin VA Outpatient Clinic and the North Central Federal Clinic in San Antonio were “as close to zero days as possible.”

The USTODAY reports the same in Fort Collins, Colorado;

Clerks at the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Fort Collins were instructed last year how to falsify appointment records so it appeared the small staff of doctors was seeing patients within the agency’s goal of 14 days, according to the investigation.

A copy of the findings by the VA’s Office of Medical Inspector was provided to USA TODAY.

Many of the 6,300 veterans treated at the outpatient clinic waited months to be seen. If the clerical staff allowed records to reflect that veterans waited longer than 14 days, they were punished by being placed on a “bad boy list,” the report shows.

This kind of tells me that it was accepted practice throughout the agency and in order to fix the problem, we need changes in leadership all through the ranks to the very tip-top. It’s obviously a “command climate” that makes this an acceptable solution to bureaucratic failures that can’t treat veterans in a reasonable amount of time.

Well, you might remember that the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix had a secret waiting list for treatment of veterans and it looks like at least 40 veterans died while waiting to see a doctor, any doctor. According to CNN, the director of the hospital, Sharon Helman has been placed on leave along with two others for her part in the scheme to make the hospital look efficient by killing off patients while the agency investigates itself.

The announcement Thursday by U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki came a day after officials at the Phoenix VA denied in interviews with CNN the existence of such a list, only to be called liars hours later by the top VA physician who first appeared on CNN and brought the allegations to light.

“We believe it is important to allow an independent, objective review to proceed,” Shinseki said in a written statement. “… These allegations, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and if the Inspector General’s investigation substantiates these claims, swift and appropriate action will be taken.”

Yeah, while they’re at it, they can investigate why the president thinks Shinseki is blameless in the the preponderance of inefficiency of the veterans Affairs Department. Somehow, everyone seems scared of Shinseki. While evidence mounts that he is an incompetent boob, he seems bullet proof.

The Washington Examiner reports that a million and a half orders for medical care have disappeared at the VA nationwide, and there’s no way to track whether or not those veterans ever received their care in another gambit to hide the VA’s bureaucratic inefficiencies;

Since May 2013, veterans’ medical centers nationwide have been under pressure to clear out 2 million backlogged orders for patient care or services.

They were given wide latitude to cancel unfilled appointments more than 90 days old. By April 2014, the backlog of what the agency calls “unresolved consults” was down to about 450,000.

What happened to other 1.5 million appointments is something that no one, including top officials at the veterans’ agency, can answer.

A review by the Government Accountability Office of the process VA used to close old consult orders found that poor documentation in patient files and the lack of independent verification made it impossible to know whether patients got care they needed before their medical orders were canceled.

Is there a war against veterans in this administration? That certainly appears to be the case.

Fox News reports that Sharon Helman, the Phoenix VA official who instituted the program which hid the facility’s inability to treat veterans in a timely manner was also at the agency’s Spokane facility and instituted a program to hide veteran suicides there;

From July 2007 through the first week of July 2008, at least 22 veterans in the Spokane VA service area committed suicide. During that same time period, however, Spokane VA reported nine suicides and 34 attempted suicides, according to Military.com and other media outlets.

Helman was director of the Spokane facility at the time the number of suicides were being misreported. Shortly after news revealed that such data had been falsified, Helman was transferred to the VA facility in Hines, Ill., after having spent less than two years in Spokane. From there, Helman moved to Phoenix, where she became director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system in February 2012.

Despite her piss-poor performance, Helman was paid a $9,345 bonus on top of her nearly $170,000 salary, so apparently, her deceit is not only accepted at the VA, but rewarded. The VA rots from the head.

The Washington Times reports that a Veterans’ Affairs project to build a new hospital in Denver to treat veterans there is an example of everything that is wrong with government projects;

The budget for the facility was first estimated at $328 million in 2004, but now that has more than doubled to $800 million in 2012 — with the potential for even more increases still.

And the time frame has grown along with the cost, pushed back more than a year to where completion currently stands at May 2015.

“VA’s primary contractor on the project has expressed concerns that the project will ultimately cost more to complete and that a completion date of May 2015 is no longer realistic based on schedule delays,” said Lorelei St. James, the director for physical infrastructure issues for the Government Accountability Office.

Although it may be the best example of incompetence, it doesn’t stand alone;

The troubles at the Denver project are not unique. In 2013, the GAO estimated that the VA’s four largest construction projects — in Colorado and three other sites — were each on average $366 million over budget and 35 months behind schedule.

Glenn Haggstrom, the VA official in charge of the department’s construction, said the agency has been improving how it handles large building projects.

The VA has been “handling” building projects since forever, and they’re just now getting around to improving how they handle the projects? But it takes them all of these taxpayer dollars to refine their practices. If this isn’t indicative of my contention over the last five years that there is no leadership at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, I don’t know what would convince you. They’re killing patients, inept at building facilities, buried under claims, but they throw lavish parties, pay lavish bonuses, clapping themselves on their backs for their gross incompetence.

Fire Shinseki, and hire someone who will kick these boobs’ asses and get back to the business of serving veterans instead of the bureaucrats.