As America pauses to honor the work of military personnel this Veterans Day, the federal government is also using the holiday to highlight several improvements to how the nation helps those who have served.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that the “Road to Veterans Day” initiative in September resulting in progress for veterans over the past three months.
During that time, VA has taken actions to improve service delivery for veterans, rebuild trust, increase accountability and transparency and put the department on the path to long-term excellence and reform.
“Over the past three months, we’ve been taking a hard look at ourselves, listening to Veterans, employees, Veterans organizations, unions, members of Congress, and our other partners. Their insights are shaping our work to chart the path for the future,” said Secretary Robert A. McDonald, who has traveled extensively during his first few months in office, visiting 41 VA facilities in 21 cities while also making 11 recruiting visits to medical schools. “While more work remains, our dedicated employees are making progress to better serve Veterans.”
To improve service delivery, VA has prioritized efforts to accelerate Veterans off of wait lists and into clinics through the Accelerated Care Initiative begun by Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson this summer.
Through the initiative, VA medical centers have increased access to care inside and outside of VA, added more clinic hours and work days, deployed mobile medical units, and shared their best practices from VA’s high-performing facilities throughout the organization.
Improvements include scheduling more than 1.2 million more appointments in the past four months than in the same period last year. In total, VA medical centers have scheduled over 19 million veteran appointments from June to October 1, 2014.
Over the past three months, VA has focused on identifying the scope of the problems facing the department and taking significant actions to correct deficiencies, to include holding employees accountable.
Since June 2014, VA has proposed disciplinary action against more than 40 employees nationwide related to data manipulation or patient care. VA is also working to cooperate with the over 100 investigations currently being undertaken by the VA Inspector General, the Justice Department, and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).
On October 3rd, OSC certified VA under their Whistleblower Protection Certification Program after VA worked to achieve compliance and protect employees who identify or report problems from unlawful retaliation. VA also worked closely with OSC to successfully resolve whistleblower retaliation complaints filed by three individuals from the VA Phoenix Health Care System.
VA has posted data online on a regular basis since the beginning of June showing the number of appointments on waiting lists and the average wait times at each medical center across the country.
Working with its federal, state and local partners to end homelessness among veterans, VA reports the number of homeless veterans has been reduced by 33 percent since 2010.
According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, roughly 40 percent of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 10.4 percent and 3.4 percent of the U.S. veteran population.
With the backlog of disability claims reduced by 60 percent since its peak in March of 2013, VA is also on track to eliminate the backlog in 2015 and will continue to expand online claim-submission capability in all programs.
“VA exists to serve our Nation’s Veterans and their families. I’m convinced that our comprehensive reforms will enable us to better meet the needs of our Veterans because we will be looking at everything we do through their eyes. We owe them nothing less,” McDonald said.