The Department of Veterans Affairs for the past year has been dealing with a damaging revelation that the VA around the country were falsifying records in order to hid long patient wait time.
The damage keeps coming as the VA Inspector General’s report issues a blistering report which calls into question the agency’s and the administrations promise to overhaul how the nation takes care of its veterans.
Once the scandal broke last year it led to the resignation of embattled VA Director Retired General Eric Shinseki, to be replaced with former Procter & Gamble CEO Robert McDonald.
Even with the change it seems the promise to clean house at the VA has gone unheeded, and the situation is only getting worse.
The IG reportly found that Philadelphia Pension Management Center staff did not respond timely to more than 31,000 inquiries that had been pending on average for 312 days, even though they are supposed to respond in five days.
The report also mentioned that claims dates were manipulated to hide delays, with $2.2 million in improper payments because of duplicate records, 22,000 pieces of mail were ignored and over 16,000 involving patient records with some dating back four years were never scanned into the system.
“This report is as bleak as it gets, full of systemic malfeasance and deliberate data manipulation,” charged Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, in a statement after the story broke April 15. “The Philadelphia VA Regional Office is in crisis, brought on by years of mismanagement and encouraged by VA’s longstanding refusal to hold employees accountable.”
These are just many of the damaging and downright mismanagement at the VA, and this past week lawmaker’s grilled VA officials on another area and that is the construction of a new VA facility in Denver.
The new VA facility in Denver has been in the pipeline for years, and at present time has cost a staggering $1.7 billion, and it’s still incomplete, as officials have run out of money.
Fox News reported that Miller’s committee held a hearing this week at which members asked VA officials why contract specialist Adelino Gorospe, who said he was fired after warning department executives in 2011 that the hospital would cost more than estimated, was fired, but Glenn Haggstrom, the VA’s top construction executive, was able to retire with full pension benefits amid the investigation.
“What’s most disappointing about this situation, however, is that Haggstrom left on his own terms – with a lifetime pension – even though any reasonable person would conclude that he should have been fired years ago,” said Miller, calling the VA’s construction program, “a disaster.”
It’s time for a complete investigation of the VA as the argument goes that the VA needs more funding because of the influx of veterans from Vietnam and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the VA budget has increased from around $95 billion in 2009 to around $165 billion today. The question how is funding being allocated and who is held responsible for this gross mismanagement?
Why the Department of Justice hasn’t began an investigation into fraud at the VA as administrators received bonuses all the while manipulating patient wait times and veterans have died while in the care of the VA.
Our veterans deserve better than they are receiving from the VA.
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