As reported by CNN and News4Jax, thousands of veterans who are patients at the VA Greater Los Angeles Health System have been made to wait months just for an appointment.
It is also said administrators in charge of the large VA facility may have misled Congress by hiding wait times.What this means is the scandal that ultimately resulted in the resignation on VA Secretary Eric Shinseki is apparently far from over. Also the changes promised by the VA and the Obama administration are not being fulfilled.
This is significant because the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Medical Center is by far the nation’s largest VA health care system. They care for hundreds of thousands of veterans.
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Documents obtained by CNN show more than 12,700 appointments in which Veteran Center consults have been waiting more than 90 days to be address as of mid-January.
The documents also showed more than 1,600 new patient veterans have been waiting 60 to 90 days for appointment. 400 veterans have been waiting 6 months and 64 veterans have been waiting six months to a year just to be seen.
Just last month, the VA’s acting director for the region told Congress that veterans have only had to wait a few days for an appointment.Before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Dr. Skye McDougall, the acting director said:
The average wait time for a new patient right now is about four days.
According the recently found documents: that was a lie. In actuality, the average wait time for new patients at the time of the testimony was 48 days.
Since the last scandal, Congress has approved $16 billion extra for the VA which was supposed to be used to hire more doctors, nurses and build more facilities in hopes to shorten wait times.
Once must wonder where all the money went and why veterans are still being to wait a long time just to get an appointment.
