Thanks to Larry Scott over at
VAWatchdog.org this became a story in the first place. Then Paul Sullivan over at
Veterans For Common Sense.org jumped on it to get the word out to even more people. These are the heroes who track what is really happening to veterans day in and day out. Want to know how we really care, or should I say, don't really care about our veterans, read some of the work they do and then you'll know what are fairytales and what is their worst nightmare. We cannot go blindly day to day and just assume all is well with our veterans because it isn't and it won't be until the American people actually do pay attention as much as they pay attention to them coming home to their hometowns in flag draped coffins.
VA Scandal - VA Manipulates Appointment Scheduling
On June 23, 2010, veteran Larry Scott at VA Watchdog uncovered a huge VA scandal. Larry posted VA's memo descrbing 24 "tricks" or "gaming strategies" so VA would appear to help veterans get appointments fast. In fact, VA was delaying and denying medical care.
VA failed to fulfill the agency's promise to provide our veterans with prompt medical care. Instead of taking responsibility and actually improving access to care, VA is cooking the books and hoping no one will dig deeper.
VA cheated, and our veterans suffered.
Thanks go out to the investigative journalist who wrote the first news article about the VA scandal, Nora Eisenberg at AlterNet. Additional commendation goes to Kyra Phillips at CNN for making this national news. The CNN article contains a VCS statement about VA's outrageous "Cooked Appointment Books" scandal.
Vets' care hurt by bureaucratic games, memo says
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 2, 2010 12:25 p.m. EDT
Paul Sullivan, from the group Veterans for Common Sense, told CNN the memo is "absolutely" symptomatic of a nationwide problem with the VA. "It's tragic (and) beyond unacceptable," he said. If VA employees are "cooking the books, (they) need to find another job."
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Memo: Veterans being denied care due to improper scheduling practices
VA employees using "gaming strategies" for better performance scores
Top VA official promises to stop denial of care
Advocate for veterans says practice is "tragic" and "unacceptable"
(CNN) -- Military veterans are being denied health care due to "inappropriate scheduling practices" at VA facilities, according to an internal memo from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The memo, written on April 26, says employees at various VA facilities often canceled veterans' appointments with doctors in order to generate better performance scores in reports to supervisors.
"In order to improve scores on assorted access measures, certain facilities have adopted use of inappropriate scheduling practices sometimes referred to as 'gaming strategies,'" the memo says.
"Example: as a way to combat Missed Opportunity rates some medical centers cancel appointments for patients not checked in 10 or 15 minutes prior to their scheduled appointment time. Patients are informed that it is medical center policy that they must check in early and if they fail to do so, it is the medical center's right to cancel that appointment."
read more here
Vets care hurt by bureaucratic games, memo says
One other thing that is done is to schedule and appointment, say Tuesday, at 3PPM, with a verbal agreement. Then if the Veteran appears, the Appointment is logged in to the VA computer system. If not, it's never logged as a missed appointment, which hurts their "Missed Opportunities (to treat a different Veteran) Score".
ReplyDeleteInteresting point but I believe some of the doctors are still logging in the missed appointments. My husband missed appointments early on in his treatment process because we had to pay for his treatment until his claim was approved. (Long story) We would get a phone call about him missing it, asking if he was ok or wanted to reschedule it. He had great doctors back in Massachusetts and has great ones now too, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that there are other parts of the country where overwhelmed staff are dropping the ball.
ReplyDeleteBut this report goes much deeper than that. The veterans are told right off the bat that they need to check in ahead of time. No big secret there. They do in fact cancel appointments and my husband gets phone calls or appointment reminders all the time about this. The other thing is that what they don't talk about much is that when the push was on for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to get in the door sooner, they were pushing back Vietnam veterans and seeing them less often. If the Vietnam vet didn't complain, they were seen on three or four months instead of once a month. If they said they couldn't deal with that or had a problem needing more care, then the doctor worked with them to get them in more often.