New Report Says Veterans Administration (VA) Exaggerated Quality

Posted on May 18, 2007
The piece that I read was put out by the McClatchy news service in Washington D.C. saying that the VA had inflated its achievements in ways to make it seem more successful than it is in reality. This conclusion was based upon a survey of documents. The conclusion about the report of the VA is that the Veterans Administration Department has a habit of over selling progress they have made to improve its health system in order to convince congress that the VA has enough resources to do its job which is to care for the nation's veterans. What could be more important than caring for the nation's military and keeping the country’s promise to provide them life long medical care? Many soldiers have been returning from Iraq with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological injuries.

Forty of the VA hospitals did not have the required specialized unit known as PTSD clinical teams to treat these men and women. The VA’s own Inspector General found that scheduling records had been repeatedly manipulated to try to show how quickly veterans were getting in for appointments in a way that was not true. Top officials at the VA have repeatedly claimed quality for VA system that is not supported by the evidence. For example the report shows that one veteran was referred for an ophthalmology clinic visit that actually took 264 days of waiting to get in and yet the VA in their reporting claimed that the waiting time was only two days.

I find this outrageous. It doesn’t surprise me that many of my personal injury clients in Virginia (VA) and elsewhere refuse to get their medical treatment through the VA because of the ridiculous wait times and the lack of trust between veterans and the VA medical system.

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