{"id":59023,"date":"2015-03-31T13:15:23","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T17:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=59023"},"modified":"2015-03-31T14:52:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T18:52:48","slug":"more-va-good-news-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=59023","title":{"rendered":"More VA \u201cGood News\u201d Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

VA management is in the news again. And not in a good way \u2013 as if I really needed to say that last.<\/p>\n

First, we have the highly efficient administrator of the VA Hospital in Puerto Rico. The man is amazing. He\u2019s getting paid nearly $180k a year \u2013 but he\u2019s worth every penny. He\u2019s so good that he can get his job done while only showing up for work at his primary duty station about two-thirds of the time<\/a>. In a one year period, he delegated authority for someone to act in his absence on about 80 days.<\/p>\n

Did I mention that during one of his absences, at 2AM one morning he was arrested in Florida – while sitting in a car, reportedly reeking of alcohol?\u00a0 Or that he also reportedly refused twice to take a breathalyzer test?\u00a0 And was also apparently in possession of oxycodone for which he had no prescription? Well, I guess I just did.<\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s that enterprising VA manager in Hawaii. He had a claims backlog problem, and HQ was wanted the processing time shortened.<\/p>\n

His solution? Cook the books<\/a>. He figured out how to bypass controls in the VA\u2019s system that tracked the progress of claims so he could make his team\u2019s performance look better than it really was.<\/p>\n

Doing that also had some other effects, though. Specifically, it also delayed the actual processing and payment of valid claims for qualifying vets.<\/p>\n

The individual no longer works for the VA, thankfully. He resigned. That\u2019s good \u2013 because based on what we\u2019ve seen in other cases recently, I have my doubts whether the VA would have fired him.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really starting to wonder whether \u201craze and rebuild\u201d isn\u2019t a better option for the VA at this point than \u201crepair\u201d. It\u2019s looking more and more like they may really be FUBAR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VA management is in the news again. And not in a good way \u2013 as if … More VA \u201cGood News\u201d Stories<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59023","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\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}