Tag Archives: Veterans Affairs

The VA Strikes Again

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Reform the Veterans Administration?  It’s still not happening.  It’s hard to believe the folks nominally in charge (they can’t be termed “leadership”) are even trying.

An Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital already under fire for excessive wait times, festering black mold and kitchen cockroaches faces a new shame—the bodies of dead patients left unclaimed in the morgue for up to two months without proper burial, whistleblower documents allege.

One example of the VA’s…failure…here is in this string of emails, beginning 7 Dec 2015, that a whistleblower provided outside authorities.

“[There is] an invoice for an unclaimed veteran that has been here for over 30 days. Please approve for burial at Abraham Lincoln,” the clerk wrote to [Chief of Patient Administrative Services, Christopher] Wirtjes and several others.

Three days later, the clerk wrote again: “Approval of unclaimed Vet D?? Status?”

On Dec 23, the clerk wrote to human resources: “Any further on my poor unclaimed? I WILL file a police report, but I hate doing that…”

Three weeks, and Wirtjes couldn’t even be bothered to respond.

There have been no consequences for Wirtjes, either.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Veterans Administration Mendacity

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It just keeps on keepin’ on.

Officials at the Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston and its associated clinics altered records to make it appear that hundreds of appointments canceled by staff were really called off by patients, according to the VA’s Office of Inspector General.  The federal audit determined the changes were made to hide unacceptable wait times as VA hospitals around the country were under fire for neglecting patients.

This was for the 12 months ending June of last year, but it’s still after widespread corruption at VA facilities across the nation had been exposed.  No one in VA management, apparently, cares a whit about the veterans in their supposed care.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

“Systemic” Failures at VA Watchdog

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That’s the heart the title of USA Today‘s piece earlier this week on the Veterans Administration’s continued failure to perform.  This smacks of active coverup by the top levels of the VA.

A Senate investigation of poor health care at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, WI, found systemic failures in a VA inspector general’s review of the facility….

And

The probe by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found the inspector general’s office…discounted key evidence and witness testimony, needlessly narrowed its inquiry, and has no standard for determining wrongdoing.

And [emphasis added]

One of the biggest failures identified by Senate investigators was the inspector general’s decision not to release its investigation report….

Releasing the report would have forced VA officials to publicly address the issue and ensured follow up by the inspector general to make sure the VA took action. Instead, the inspector general’s office briefed local VA officials and closed the case.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The VA Strikes Again, Again

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has mistakenly declared [more than 4,000] veterans to be deceased and canceled their benefits over the past five years, a new snafu to emerge at the embattled department.

Of course, one thing that’s carefully elided is the “evidence” the VA uses to tell a veteran he’s dead.

The department doesn’t keep records of the causes behind such errors.

Can’t have things like this be known to be commonplace:

A clerical error led to the first instance of [Navy veteran Michael] Rieker’s canceled benefits after a VA employee identified him as Michael G. Rieker—though his middle initial is “C”—and declared him dead in the system, according to a department letter sent in December.

Under the system that led to Mr Rieker’s benefits cancellation, the VA’s system automatically cross-checked the name and Social Security number with the Social Security Administration’s so-called Death Master File….

That’s an utterly dishonest response to a simple typo.  For how long had “Michael G Rieker” been dead, and why was a flag not raised over the continued payments to this dead veteran, especially in light of the VA’s having been caught out routinely paying benefits to dead veterans?  Did a “Michael G Rieker” even exist in this Death file?

Not even incompetence sinks to this level of laziness, not in an agency with this one’s long, venerable track record of failure.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Wait Times, Schmait Times

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A disabled veteran needing to see a VA doctor—or a non-disabled vet who’s “merely” sick, come to that—should blow off his wait times—too often weeks or months—just as he does his half-hour or hour wait times at Disney parks.  That is, if the disabled vet can partake of a Disney park at all.  Or so said Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald:

When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line?  Or what’s important?  What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?  And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.

Indeed, as McDonald would have it, this unimportant wait time shouldn’t even be measured from when the veteran expresses his need by calling for an appointment.  No, not at all.  The proper measure is a “preferred date,” a measure of the VA’s convenience, rather than the veteran’s need.

Never mind, either, that not only is wait time a part of McDonald’s satisfaction with the experience.  For veterans needing to see their doctors, wait time too often is a Critical Item.

This is beyond disgusting or despicable.  The VA’s corporate culture of indifference isn’t going to change.  McDonald should be terminated, promptly and for cause.  And then the VA disbanded.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.