Jew World Order

Despite billions of extra dollars poured into the agency in the last
year and numerous reforms intended to improve veterans’ access to care,
whistleblowers and internal documents obtained by CNN reveal some VA facilities continue to grapple with appointment wait times of months or more. ~ DCG

CNN: Appointment wait times at the Department of Veterans Affairs are not getting better.

Even at the Phoenix VA medical center, where CNN learned last year “secret”
appointment lists were hiding how veterans were dying waiting for care,
sources say complicated wait-time calculations obscure ongoing
appointment delays.

“The reality is veterans are waiting months – three, six months at a time, sometimes more – for care at the Phoenix VA,” said one source in Phoenix who agreed to speak to CNN anonymously because of fears of retaliation. The source said this includes veterans waiting for potentially critical health procedures, such as colonoscopies, and other categories of specialty care that require timely attention.

In August, more than 8,000 requests for care had wait times longer than 90 days at the Phoenix VA, according to documents obtained by CNN, but whistleblowers
say delays like these are not accurately reflected in public data
because of changes in the VA’s method of measuring wait times. “The VA central office enables an official line that’s not consistent with reality,” the source in Phoenix said.

Additional VA documents show ongoing delays in care are not limited to Phoenix. An internal VA draft memo from August warns, “Currently wait times are increasing significantly,” referring to an overall increase of appointments with delays.”

VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson, who
received this internal memo, told CNN there are almost 500,000
appointments with extended wait times, which includes appointments with delays longer than 30 days and veterans waiting on a list for appointments to become available.

According to Gibson, the number of appointments with extended waits is even higher than it was more than a year ago,
when government and media reports revealed veterans were dying while
waiting for care in the midst of an immense backlog of appointments.

“How can it be?” Gibson said. “The lesson
that we’ve seen in location after location is when we improve access to
care, whether it’s by adding staff or space or productivity or care in
the community, more veterans come to VA for more care.”

Gibson said since the 2014
scandal, the VA has created twice the capacity that should be needed to
meet health care needs of veterans enrolled in the system, yet he said
the increased capacity has increased demand.

He added that each
month the VA completes about 1 million appointments on the same day
veterans want to be seen, but he admits there are still some waiting too
long for care. “The challenge that we have is a structural challenge,”
he said. “We work every single day trying to find ways to make it
better.”

Gibson serves at the right hand of VA
Secretary Bob McDonald, who took the helm of the agency and began
implementing reforms after an internal audit
found inappropriate scheduling practices were “systemic” at VA
facilities in 2014, which was followed by the resignation of former
Secretary Eric Shinseki.

McDonald has overseen the implementation
of $15 billion in extra funding Congress approved for the VA to improve
veterans’ access to health care, and in August, McDonald said the VA is completing appointments in less than a week on average.

Yet whistleblowers on the ground
at some VA facilities tell CNN the average wait times publicly reported
by the VA do not reflect the experiences of veterans.

For example, at the Los Angeles VA medical center
– the largest in the nation – public data released by the VA states the
average wait time was less than four days for completed mental health
appointments in August.

An internal document obtained by CNN
says the average wait time for new patients seeking mental health care
at the LA VA was 43 days in August, however.

“They’ve started to measure the numbers
differently more than they have actually improved the patients actual
wait time in many cases,” said a source in Los Angeles. The VA has
publicly confirmed a change in wait-time calculations.

Previously, wait times were measured by
tracking the time that elapsed from the day an appointment was created
until the day it was completed. Now, the VA calculates wait
times by measuring the time between the date a patient prefers to be
seen and the date the appointment is actually completed.

When asked if the VA implemented the
calculation change to conceal health care delays, Gibson said, “I
wouldn’t stand for it, not for a minute.” Gibson said the new
measurement allows VA officials to more accurately assess how
effectively the VA is meeting veterans’ preferences as well as their
clinical needs.

He added that he believes accountability
of senior VA officials, which he personally oversees, is essential to
transforming the VA’s culture, but he said about half the senior
leaders in the VA’s health department have turned over in the last two
years, so many of those who oversaw inappropriate scheduling practices
exposed in last year’s scandal are now gone.

Gibson would not cite a specific number of people who were disciplined specifically for issues related to the scandal,
but he said, “I never ever saw an organization where leadership and
management excellence was defined by how many people you fire.”

According to a congressional source, the VA has fired three lower-level staffers for wait-time manipulations, while three senior VA leaders were removed through the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act,
a 2014 law that expedited the VA process for firing executives.

Five
other VA executives recommended for removal through the 2014 law either
resigned or retired.

Dr. Katherine Mitchell, who disclosed information about delays in care at the Phoenix VA to Congress and CNN last year, said many of the VA administrators who retaliated against whistleblowers during the 2014 scandal remain in top positions.

“The culture of retaliation continues,” Mitchell said. “At
this point in the VA, you risk your job, you risk your reputation if
you speak up for patient care problems. You do not risk your job if you
retaliate against someone. And it should be just the reverse.”

A VA inspector general report released
in October exposed how delayed treatment in the Phoenix VA’s urology
department significantly affected the care of patients who became sick
or, in some cases, died in recent years.

Mitchell said the problems continue, adding that she has “no hesitation” patients are still dying while waiting for care. “Right now no one knows how many appointments are delayed or for how long they’re delayed,” Mitchell said. “I would question any statistic that comes out of the VA.”

Source

October 22, 2015 – KnowTheLies

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