{"id":50301,"date":"2014-06-09T13:29:20","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T17:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=50301"},"modified":"2014-06-09T13:29:20","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T17:29:20","slug":"vas-audit-57000-vets-waiting-for-appointments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=50301","title":{"rendered":"VA’s audit: 57,000 vets waiting for appointments"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press<\/a> reports that an internal audit by the VA reports that 57,000 veterans have been waiting for more than three months for appointments with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs healthcare system. Additionally, 64,000 have never been seen by a VA doctor;<\/p>\n

Examining 731 VA hospitals and large outpatient clinics, the audit found long wait times across the country for patients seeking their first appointments with both primary care doctors and specialists.<\/p>\n

The audit said a 14-day target for waiting times was “not attainable,” given growing demand for VA services and poor planning. It called the 2011 decision by senior VA officials setting it, and then basing bonuses on meeting the target “an organizational leadership failure.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

13% of the people who schedule appointments for veterans report that they were instructed by the supervisors to account for the long wait times creatively (not in the interest of the veteran, but rather in the interest of the bureaucrats).<\/p>\n

Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said the audit showed “systemic problems” that demand immediate action. VA officials have contacted 50,000 veterans across the country to get them off waiting lists and into clinics, Gibson said, and are in the process of contacting an additional 40,000 veterans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, we should have waited for Shinseki to pull his head from his nether regions and things would have got better faster. That was sarcasm, in case some of you internet sharpshooters don’t recognize it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press reports that an internal audit by the VA reports that 57,000 veterans have … VA’s audit: 57,000 vets waiting for appointments<\/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-50301","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\/50301","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=50301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50301\/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=50301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}