VA chief: Agency too complicated for veterans to navigate
WASHINGTON - The Veterans Affairs Department with its 14 different password-protected websites is too complicated for most veterans to navigate, new Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald said Monday, promising to make it easier for them to get disability benefits, health care, job training and other benefits.
The VA must "put veterans at the center of everything we do," he said.
McDonald took over the agency in July after former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned amid a political furor over veterans in need of medical care having to wait months for appointments at VA hospital and clinics. Investigators said efforts to cover up or hide the delays were systemic throughout the agency's network of nearly 1,000 hospitals and clinics.
At his first news conference as secretary, McDonald unveiled what he called a three-point plan to rebuild trust among veterans, improve service delivery and set a course for the agency's long-term future. The plan should be implemented by Veterans Day, Nov. 11, he said.
The former Procter & Gamble CEO also said he wants to make the VA less formal, starting with his own title. "Call me Bob," not Mr. Secretary, he said.
He gave his cellphone number to a roomful of reporters as a sign of his intent to open up what he called the VA's closed culture, which he said has made it difficult to root out problems at the agency's far-flung local and regional offices.
On Tuesday, McDonald is scheduled to testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee about a report by the department's inspector general on delays in patient care at the VA's Phoenix medical center, where a whistleblower first exposed long delays in patient care. The report said workers falsified waitlists while their supervisors looked the other way or even directed it, resulting in chronic delays for veterans seeking care.
The VA's inspector-general's office identified 40 patients who died while awaiting appointments in Phoenix, but in a written memorandum about the report, McDonald said: "It is important to note that while OIG's case reviews in the report document substantial delays in care, and quality-of-care concerns, OIG was unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the death of these veterans."
Three high-ranking officials at the Phoenix facility have been placed on leave, however, while they appeal a department decision to fire them.
In July, Congress approved spending an additional $16 billion to help shore up the system. The proposal includes $10 billion to allow veterans who are unable to receive a timely appointment within the VA system to seek care from outside providers. It also includes $5 billion to allow the VA to hire more doctors and nurses to handle a greater caseload, and approximately $1.3 billion to finance leases for 27 new VA facilities across the country.
"This will not and cannot be the end of our effort," President Obama said at the time. "Implementing this law will take time. It is going to require focus on the part of all of us. And even as we focus on the urgent reforms we need at the VA right now, particularly around wait lists and healthcare system, we can't lose sight of our long term goals for our service members and our veterans."
McDonald echoed that, saying VA officials "feel terrible" about the findings.
"We have worked on remedies for everything that they pointed out," he said, noting that three of 25 recommendations by the inspector general have already been implemented. "We are very sorry for what happened in Phoenix and we are working very hard to learn from it and pass those learnings around the entire system so that this does not happen again."