I cannot think of a more disgraceful and gut-wrenching scenario for our country to be guilty of than failing to take care of our veterans.
Following a highly politicized swap of high-ranking Taliban leaders detained at Gitmo for Bowe Bergdhal, the President paraded the soldier’s parents in the Rose Garden. Someone in the Obama administration should be fired for not doing basic homework to discover the soldier’s story. It was pertinent to know that he is accused of having deserted his base in Afghanistan before they scheduled the president in a cozy press conference with his parents, questionable at best especially in light of the fact that the Pres bypassed Congressional permission on the exchange. Was it a political PR stunt to divert attention away from the disgusting VA scandal?
Much has been and will be said about how this country doesn’t leave one of its own behind.
Everyone who believes this, versus giving it lip service, should be up in arms about the scandal unfolding daily in the lack of care of our veterans once they get home. It actually defies the imagination: live through the hell of war, to come home and not be able to get a doctor’s appointment at your own government’s hospital or clinic.
To die waiting to see a doctor.
There are 9 million veterans enrolled as patients in the VA system of 150 hospitals and 820 outpatient clinics. These facilities treat approximately 6 million veterans each year. North Carolina has facilities in Raleigh, Durham, Winston-Salem, Salisbury, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Jacksonville, Wilmington along with half a dozen smaller cities.
The national agency charged with their care has failed our veterans in the most heinous way. All those beautiful facilities scattered across the country, which should have been a bastion of hope and healing for service men and women, masking the worst possible scenario: falsified appointment data to make employees’ performance reviews more favorable. These reviews were what was used to determine salary increases and bonuses for these civil employees.
In addition to the investigations into willful misconduct in scheduling practices, the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel is investigating alleged illegal retaliation against 37 VA employee whistleblowers in 19 states, including North Carolina. It was allegations of retaliation against a just-retired doctor at a VA hospital in Phoenix in March that broke the scandal. Phoenix VA is being investigated to see what part the delays caused in the deaths of up to 40 veterans while they waited for care and a possible cover up once the story broke.
As the ignominy grew to include North Carolina, an internal Department of Veterans Affairs audit released June 9 showing Fayetteville and Durham VA hospitals are just as bad as some of the worst offenders, with Durham holding the distinction of being the worst in the system for veterans obtaining new mental health appointments. The average wait: 104 days. VA Fayetteville Medical Center, the parent facility for the 85,000-square-foot Wilmington VA outpatient clinic at 1705 Gardner Road, had a record of 83 days for the first appointment for primary care.
It is to be hoped that the visit by acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson to the Fayetteville VA Medical Center this week is not a ploy to help Sen. Kay Hagan in her reelection campaign, but because of deep concern that the medical center there has some of the worst wait times in this country. Hagan wrote to acting Secretary Gibson the day the audit was released requesting he visit the Fayetteville center because of the egregious wait times at Fayetteville for veterans. In her letter Hagan wrote, “I am appalled and disturbed by the scale of the problems identified in the VA’s report, which include wait times for new patients that are the third highest in the country and wait times for established patients that are the worst in the country by far.”
The VA audit found that 13 percent of VA schedulers received instructions from supervisors and were pressured to falsify scheduling records.
Just before he resigned, the VA performance goal of 14 days for performance contracts was suspended by outgoing Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. The performance goals were tied to pay increases and bonuses.
The wait in our state has been six to seven times longer than the 14-day goal.
As the nation’s legislative body enters into debate, it is hoped that politics do not prevail, but we move forward with proposals to get veterans off wait lists, and into clinics, government or private, as the audit recommends. It is the right thing to do.
Once the wait time backlogs have been addressed, veterans seen by doctors, then performance pay and bonus figures need vigilant scrutiny. A recommendation of the audit was to suspend performance awards for FY14, which was a good move.
It was a red letter day in 2013 when U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, Sen. Kay Hagan, Elizabeth Goolsby, director of the Fayetteville VA Medical Center, Daniel Hoffmann, director of the VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network, Sen. Richard Burr and Rep. Walter Jones cut the ribbon during the grand opening of the new Wilmington Multi-Specialty Outpatient Clinic located near the Wilmington airport.
But one has to wonder, who was asleep at the wheel, or looking the other way? Why did it take so long for such a systemic pattern of misconduct to come to light? Who knew what, and when, needs to be a part of the ongoing investigation.
National TV and print media have reported on a 2008 memo CBS News reportedly obtained from the VA to the Obama-Biden transition team that VA facilities “might be concealing the true amount of time veterans had to wait for care.”
It is difficult to believe Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki had no clue as he worked to get veteran benefit claims moving, which was no small matter.
But Shinseki’s resignation is not nearly enough.
Next a house cleaning is needed, a clean sweep nationwide of the VA managers and supervisors, regardless of the shield of civil service status.
VA employees need to be moved to “at will” employment status giving them no right to keep their job when they falsify records and cover up their actions.
And then there must be accountability.
Nothing else will do.
