Veterans still can face long waits for care — if they get it at all

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/19/veterans-still-can-face-long-waits-for-care-if-they-get-it-at-all/

Veterans still can face long waits for care — if they get it at all

By Eric Yoder April 19 

Veterans newly enrolling for health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs and requesting an appointment commonly wait for months before they first see a medical provider and the department’s way of measuring those waits understates them, a House committee was told on Tuesday. VA officials faced a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee skeptical of the department’s response in the two years since a hearing there triggered a flood of revelations that veterans had been enduring long waits for care and that some patient records had been fudged to hide it.

As of April, the average waiting times for appointments were seven days for primary care, 10 days for specialty care and four days for mental health care, according to VA’s most recent data. However, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Monday that for new enrollees, VA calculates wait times from the day that veterans set a specific appointment with a VA representative, rather than from when they first ask VA to contact them to schedule one.
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The average waiting time for that entire sequence at the six medical centers the GAO studied ranged from 22 to 71 days. Of the 180 new enrollees the GAO tracked, 60 still had not been seen by the time the auditors ended their review last month, in several cases because VA never followed up on their requests to be contacted or because they were left off the eligibility list in error.
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In addition, the GAO found that “scheduling errors, such as incorrectly revising preferred dates when rescheduling appointments, understated the amount of time veterans waited to see providers.”
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