VA botches appointment scheduling, report says

If you work for the VA understand this;

I post a lot about how the VA fails our veterans. This is just one more case of that but I really feel that occasionally I need to remind the readers that there are great things being done as well.

If you work for the VA,
I appreciate the fact you work for the VA and most of you do a fantastic job for our veterans. Between taking care of my Dad and my husband, I have no complaints about the care they received once their claims were approved. I really respect the work most of you do. That said, I'm very hard on the things the people running the VA do because of things like this. When they fail the veterans, it makes your job harder. Please don't be offended by the reports coming out. If things need to be fixed, helped us out so that they get fixed and the veterans get the care they deserve. Isn't that why you work for the VA?

VA botches appointment scheduling, report says

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 5, 2008 16:59:32 EST

A new report says Veterans Centers run by the Department of Veterans Affairs could have seen more patients in the past year if they did a better job scheduling and rescheduling visits.

About 4.9 million appointments were not kept in fiscal 2008, with each missed visit costing the VA about $182, according to the report by the VA inspector general, released Dec. 4.

That means VA is both losing money and failing to treat veterans as quickly as possible by keeping a flawed system for making appointments, and by not maintaining waiting lists to fill appointments canceled at the last minute.

A medical facility sometimes may leave an appointment open intentionally because visits can run long, and facilities worry about being able to see everyone.

But the report also found about 3.1 million incidents in fiscal 2008 when patients did not show up for appointments, and 1.8 million appointments that were canceled by the patient and not refilled with other patients.

Having 4.9 million unfilled appointments does not mean VA potentially could see 4.9 million more people, however. Most were seen later, and some of those were multiple appointments for the same person.
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