June 13, 2014

Sloan Gibson, Acting VA Secretary, pledged to veterans groups on June 9 that he would do all he could to ensure wait-listed veterans would soon be seen in VA hospitals and clinics.  He said the primary cause of the problem at the VA Phoenix facility was a “sustained leadership failure.”    

Gibson’s meeting came as the VA released an internal audit revealing that over 100,000 veterans were wait-listed for care in VA facilities. The audit found that “nationwide, there are roughly 57,436 veterans who are waiting to be scheduled for care and another 63,869 who over the past ten years have enrolled in our health care system and have not been seen for an appointment.”   

The audit found that a “system-wide…complicated scheduling process” confounds clerks and front-line supervisors in a number of locations. The 14-day wait-time “performance target” for new appointments was inconsistently used throughout the VA system and unrealistic given “growing demand for services and a lack of planning resource requirements.”  

Secretary Gibson contrasted the problems at Phoenix with what he observed at the San Antonio facility, which he also visited last week. There leaders and front-line managers were coping with demand by extending clinic hours into the evening and weekends. He said that but for the (effective) leadership, San Antonio would be like the Phoenix facility. Gibson directed a third-party audit of scheduling practices throughout the VA system.  

In releasing the audit data, the VA also announced a set of additional management actions to speed access to care for veterans and fix underlying problems. These include:   

• Establishing a new patient satisfaction measurement program developed with input from veteran groups and outside health care organizations
• Holding senior leaders accountable
• Posting access data bi-monthly
• Modeling high performing facilities to help those needing improvement  

In response to a question from MOAA’s Bob Norton, Deputy Director for Government Relations, on whether the VA would modify its nationwide PC-3 (purchased care) contracts with Health Net and TriWest so they could provide primary care to veterans in locations where demand exceeds capacity, Gibson and his senior health care team said they were looking at ways to maximize all of VA’s purchased care vehicles. But he emphasized purchased care would be used to address “extraordinary demand,” not to replace VA’s direct care system.    

Gibson said that the VA would aggressively work to clear the backlog starting with those veterans waiting the longest for access to care, an approach that is used to work down the VA disability claims backlog. For the new Acting Secretary, the root of the VA’s current crisis is about “leadership taking ownership.”  We couldn’t agree more.  

Days after Secretary Gibson met with MOAA, the Senate passed Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) bipartisan veterans’ health care bill.   

The House and Senate were expected to reach a compromise on a comprehensive VA health care reform bill.