115-Day Wait Time for Veterans’ Care in Phoenix Has Congress Calling for VA Chief to Step Down

A pre­lim­in­ary re­port Wed­nes­day from the Vet­er­ans Af­fairs De­part­ment’s in­spect­or gen­er­al con­firmed that at least 1,700 vet­er­ans were kept off of wait­ing lists at the Phoenix Health Care Sys­tem, lead­ing more law­makers on Cap­it­ol Hill to call for Vet­er­ans Af­fairs Sec­ret­ary Eric Shin­seki to step down.

“While our work is not com­plete, we have sub­stan­ti­ated that sig­ni­fic­ant delays in ac­cess to care neg­at­ively im­pacted the qual­ity of care at [the Phoenix] med­ic­al fa­cil­ity,” act­ing In­spect­or Gen­er­al Robert Griffin wrote in the new re­port.

And the is­sues there are not unique. “We are find­ing that in­ap­pro­pri­ate schedul­ing prac­tices are a sys­tem­ic prob­lem na­tion­wide,” he wrote.

Us­ing a sample of 226 vet­er­ans at the Phoenix fa­cil­it­ies, Griffin’s team found that vet­er­ans waited 115 days on av­er­age be­fore re­ceiv­ing their first primary care ap­point­ment, far more than the 14 days re­com­men­ded by the Vet­er­ans Af­fairs De­part­ment. Phoenix had re­por­ted its av­er­age wait was 24 days. Of those same vet­er­ans, 85 per­cent of them waited more than 14 days on av­er­age to re­ceive care, while Phoenix of­fi­cials re­por­ted that just 43 per­cent of vet­er­ans waited that long.

The In­spect­or Gen­er­al’s Of­fice found that sched­ulers were pres­sured by their su­per­i­ors to al­ter wait­ing times, which are factored in­to staff mem­bers’ bo­nuses and salary raises. In some cases, sched­ulers would change a vet­er­an’s re­ques­ted ap­point­ment date to the next date the fa­cil­ity had avail­able, res­ult­ing in a zero-day wait time.

In ad­di­tion to the wait­ing-list delays, Griffin said that his of­fice re­ceived “nu­mer­ous al­leg­a­tions daily of mis­man­age­ment, in­ap­pro­pri­ate hir­ing de­cisions, sexu­al har­ass­ment, and bul­ly­ing be­ha­vi­or by mid- and seni­or-level man­agers” at the Phoenix Health Care Sys­tem.

In the wake of the re­port, Sen. John Mc­Cain and Rep. Jeff Miller, the top Re­pub­lic­ans on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices and House Vet­er­ans’ Af­fairs com­mit­tees, both is­sued state­ments call­ing on Shin­seki to resign. Shortly after, Sen. Mark Ud­all be­came the first Demo­crat in the Sen­ate to join the call.

Sev­er­al dozen mem­bers of Con­gress have already called for Shin­seki’s resig­na­tion, though so far, House Ma­jor­ity Whip Kev­in Mc­Carthy and Sen­ate Minor­ity Whip John Cornyn are the only mem­bers of lead­er­ship to join them. Pres­id­ent Obama has not asked for Shin­seki to step down either, but left the door open dur­ing a speech last week. A seni­or ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial said that Shin­seki’s con­tin­ued ten­ure as head of the de­part­ment re­mains up in the air, as the in­vest­ig­a­tion con­tin­ues.

Obama was briefed on the re­port Wed­nes­day by White House Chief of Staff Denis Mc­Donough and found the re­port “ex­tremely troub­ling,” White House press sec­ret­ary Jay Car­ney said. “[Shin­seki] has said that VA will fully and ag­gress­ively im­ple­ment the re­com­mend­a­tions of the IG. The Pres­id­ent agrees with that ac­tion and re­af­firms that the VA needs to do more to im­prove vet­er­ans’ ac­cess to care,” Car­ney said in a state­ment. “Our na­tion’s vet­er­ans have served our coun­try with hon­or and cour­age and they de­serve to know they will have the care and sup­port they de­serve.”

The White House did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on wheth­er Obama sup­ports Shin­seki’s con­tin­ued ten­ure as head of the de­part­ment, even as the calls on the Hill grew louder.

The in­spect­or gen­er­al’s re­port did not in­clude the res­ults of the in­vest­ig­a­tion in­to wheth­er any of the wait­ing-list is­sues res­ul­ted in deaths, as has been re­por­ted by sev­er­al me­dia out­lets. That will be in­cluded in the of­fice’s fi­nal re­port which is due out in June.

In the in­ter­im, Griffin re­por­ted that his of­fice has de­ployed “rap­id re­sponse teams” that are vis­it­ing VA fa­cil­it­ies without warn­ing staff in or­der to in­vest­ig­ate is­sues na­tion­wide. So far, he wrote, they have vis­ited or sched­uled vis­its at 42 fa­cil­it­ies across the coun­try.

Griffin’s team also sent a series of re­com­mend­a­tions to Shin­seki, fo­cus­ing in par­tic­u­lar on get­ting the 1,700 vet­er­ans who have been wait­ing for care in­to a VA fa­cil­ity as quickly as pos­sible.

This post was up­dated on Wed­nes­day at 4 p.m. to in­clude Pres­id­ent Obama’s com­ments and ad­di­tion­al calls for Shin­seki’s resig­na­tion.