Dive Brief:
- A nationwide audit by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs reveals more than 57,000 vets waiting more than 90 days after requesting an initial primary care visit. An additional 64,000 vets enrolled in the system over the past decade have never been seen for an appointment, auditors said June 9.
- Auditors said 13% of VA schedulers were told to falsify appointment request dates to makes waits seem shorter, a practice occurring in 76% of VA facilities.
- Wait times for vets varied greatly across the U.S., the VA's internal audit found. Vets waited 81 days for an initial primary care visit in Baltimore, for example, versus a 17-day wait in Bedford, Mass.
Dive Insight:
With 2 million-plus new patients over the past five years, the VA health care system is caught between helping an influx of vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars even as it struggles to care for aging Vietnam vets. Congress is taking action: a bipartisan Senate bill would pour $500 million into the VA health care system to pay for hiring more doctors and nurses; and a House bill would let vets forced to wait more than 30 days for care to seek it immediately from the private sector.
Some emergency fixes were outlined June 9 by acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson. These 16 measures include establishing a new patient satisfaction measurement program, and initiating an independent, external audit of scheduling practices. He also eliminated a 14-day scheduling goal for medical appointments from employee performance contracts, calling it unrealistic because of the growing demand for services.
Even if emergency measures address some of the VA's challenges, how will the VA regain the trust of vets, lawmakers and the public-at-large? That is the overriding question that the latest audit — coming on the heels of an interim inspector general report finding widespread fraud to hide long waits — does not answer.
