{"id":46195,"date":"2014-05-07T11:47:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T15:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=46195"},"modified":"2014-05-07T11:48:27","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T15:48:27","slug":"more-va-appointment-data-manipulated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=46195","title":{"rendered":"More VA appointment data manipulated"},"content":{"rendered":"

The folks at Concerned Veterans for America<\/a> 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<\/a> reports;<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cverbally directed by lead clerks, supervisors, and during training\u201d to ensure that wait times at the Austin VA Outpatient Clinic and the North Central Federal Clinic in San Antonio were \u201cas close to zero days as possible.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The USTODAY<\/a> reports the same in Fort Collins, Colorado;<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A copy of the findings by the VA’s Office of Medical Inspector was provided to USA TODAY.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at Concerned Veterans for America send us a heads up that other whistle blowers … More VA appointment data manipulated<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}