Report: Veterans Affairs significantly overstates its success over
'appointments'
By Chris Adams
McClatchy Newspapers
Mon, Jun. 11, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17355113.htm
WASHINGTON - The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to significantly
overstate its success in getting patients to see doctors for timely
appointments, undercutting one of its key claims of success, according to a
draft report obtained by McClatchy Newspapers.
While top VA officials told Congress earlier this year that 95 percent of
appointments are scheduled within 30 days of a patient's requested date, the
true number is about 75 percent, according to the analysis by the department's
inspector general.
The report hasn't been released and is stamped "Draft - For Discussion Only."
It's in the final stages of preparation and could be revised.
In a statement, VA spokesman Matt Smith said the department was reviewing the
report and remains "committed to ensuring our veterans are seen in a timely
manner." The VA said it will visit facilities in need of improvement and will
hire a contractor to review the department's scheduling procedures.
Some medical centers performed far worse than average. In Columbia, S.C., and
Chillicothe, Ohio, only 64 percent of VA appointments were within 30 days of a
patient's request, the report said. The high score among centers studied was
Detroit at 84 percent.
The inspector general's report is an update of a similar report from 2005. It's
based on an analysis of 700 medical appointments and 300 referrals at 10 VA
medical centers, as well as interviews with 113 VA schedulers.
Waiting times for veterans to get in to see doctors are closely watched by
Congress and veterans' advocates. In February, the VA's top health official,
Michael Kussman, told a congressional committee that the VA provides 39 million
appointments a year - and 95 percent of them are done within 30 days of the
patient's request.
"We want to make it 100 percent," he said. "We are going to work hard to do
that. But all told, I think we are providing pretty good service for people when
they need it."
In its annual report, the VA broke those numbers down further, saying that 96
percent of primary-care appointments were within 30 days, as were 95 percent of
specialty-care appointments.
The inspector general's assessment was far different.
Looking at appointments that the VA said took place within 30 days, the
inspector general found that only 78 percent of primary-care appointments and
only 73 percent of specialist visits were within 30 days.
As it did in 2005, the inspector general found that VA schedulers weren't
following department procedures when making appointments.
The VA calculates waiting time as the difference between the appointment date
and the patient's "desired date." But the report said schedulers often
mistakenly recorded the first available appointment as the desired date, thus
understating waiting time.
In another type of error, the inspector general found that at one hospital, a
veteran was referred for a specialty appointment in April 2006. On Sept. 20, the
scheduler set an appointment for Oct. 20 - 185 days after the requested date of
April 18. But the scheduler recorded Sept. 20 as the desired date, which gave a
reported waiting time of 30 days.
Schedulers used the wrong desired dates 72 percent of the time for the bulk of
visits analyzed, according to the report.
Beyond that, schedulers failed to follow VA rules and keep up-to-date waiting
lists for patients needing appointments. Such electronic waiting lists are
"instrumental in making sure no veterans go untreated," but none of the 10
medical centers investigators looked at properly maintained the lists, the
report said.
Another continuing problem: lack of proper training. Schedulers told the
inspector general that they didn't have time to take available training. "Their
managers agreed, saying that medical facilities were short of staff and training
was not a high priority," the report said.
In a May 18 meeting between VA officials and the inspector general's office to
discuss the findings, a deputy undersecretary for health, William Feeley, said
he was concerned about the inspector general's conclusion that the VA
"overstated" the number of veterans seen within 30 days.
According to an internal report summarizing the May 18 meeting, Feeley said that
"such a statement could easily be misconstrued by readers of the report to imply
that VA was being deliberately deceptive, when there was no evidence to that
effect," the report said. "He went on to say that this is a situation where
honest people are trying to do the right thing, but that processes are breaking
down."
Last month, McClatchy reported on the VA's tendency to exaggerate its
accomplishments; among the examples was that VA Secretary Jim Nicholson told
Congress about the VA's "exceptional performance" in getting veterans in to see
doctors.
The VA told McClatchy it had largely fixed its prior scheduling problems,
although this latest report shows that the department has yet to make all the
improvements it promised after the 2005 inspector general's report.
Hopkins reports for The Charlotte Observer.