Veterans refused to attend group labeled as “non-compliant” for treatment

This is about as bad as it can be since groups do fine for some veterans but for others, it makes PTSD worse!

From Marine Times
Whistle-blower blasts VA mental health policies
By Patricia Kime -
Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Apr 25, 2012

Testimony from a former employee at a New Hampshire Veterans Affairs hospital confirmed what the VA’s inspector general noted in a scathing report released Monday — that VA embellishes its success rates of helping veterans with their mental health care needs.

Taking it further, Nicholas Tolentino, a former mental health administrator at the Manchester VA Medical Center, said VA culture encourages administrators to game performance metrics, lie on VA-wide surveys and emphasize quantity over quality.

For example, at Manchester, the hospital was able to say it was providing therapy to numerous veterans in a timely manner by placing those who needed intense individual psychotherapy into group sessions.

If veterans refused to attend group, they were labeled as “non-compliant” for treatment.

Worse, Tolentino added, this strategy spread to other regional VA hospitals, ensuring that administrations met their performance metrics by failing needy veterans.

“The system is too open to putting numerical performance goals ahead of veterans’ mental health care needs — too susceptible to gaming practices to make facilities ‘look good’ — and too little focused on overseeing the effectiveness of the mental health care,” said Tolentino, a former Navy corpsman and combat veteran.
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