The Veterans Administration Knew Vets Were Dying From Delayed Care Over A Year Ago

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is set to testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, amid controversy and calls for his resignation because of allegations that 40 veterans died while awaiting care on fraudulent waiting lists at the Phoenix V.A.

The Phoenix story has lit a media fire under the issue of veterans’ access to care, but more than a year ago, the GAO reported on the same practices being alleged in Phoenix, and in a subsequent Congressional hearing, V.A. officials testified about deaths related to the long wait times.

In addition to Shinseki’s upcoming testimony, President Obama has ordered an investigation into the Phoenix allegations on top of an ongoing Inspector General’s investigation, but those allegations, that administrators at the Phoenix VA had been keeping two separate sets of appointment books, in order to make it appear that veterans were getting appointments in a timely fashion, were foreshadowed in a December, 2012 report by the Government Accountability Office. That report took a comprehensive look at the causes of long wait times, including changing appointments on the waiting list in order to meet V.A. performance standards:

During our site visits, staff at some clinics told us they change medical appointment desired dates to show clinic wait times within VHA’s performance goals. A scheduler at one primary care clinic specifically stated that she changes the recorded desired date to the patient’s agreed-upon appointment date in order to show shorter wait times for the clinic. A provider at a specialty care clinic at another VAMC said providers in that clinic change the desired dates of their follow-up appointments if a patient cannot be scheduled within the 14-day performance goal.

Later in the report, GAO also identified a practice almost identical to the one alleged in Phoenix:

One of the clinics we visited did not use the VistA scheduling system to determine available medical appointment dates and times, and to schedule medical appointments, as required by VHA’s scheduling policy. Officials noted that this clinic lacked a full-time staff person dedicated to scheduling, and therefore, the providers called their patients to schedule their own medical appointments. Clinic staff reported that providers recorded medical appointments on sheets of paper and gave those sheets to a scheduler, who maintained a paper calendar of all medical appointments; this scheduler later recorded the appointment into the VistA scheduling system.

Based on that report, the House Committee on Veterans Affairs held a hearing on March 14, 2013, at which two Department of Veterans Affairs officials were asked about deaths due to the long wait times…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.