VA wait times should already have improved

Despite a new — and supposedly better — treatment plan, this patient has shown little improvement.

It’s been a year since revelations of long waits for medical treatment at the nation’s Veterans Affairs medical facilities — and attempts to hide the problem — rocked the nation. In some cases veterans died while waiting to be seen by medical care providers. Some patients were assigned to physicians who weren’t seeing patients to make operations look more efficient.

In the wake of the scandal, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned, investigations were launched, congressional hearings were held and pledges were made to reduce wait times. In August, Congress approved an extra $16.3 billion for the VA to hire doctors, open clinics and create a program that allows patients facing long delays to get private-sector care.

The Associated Press decided it was time this sick patient had a checkup. The AP reviewed six months of appointment data — from Sept. 1 to Feb. 28 — at 940 VA hospitals and outpatient clinics to see if wait times had dropped. It found that since summer, the number of medical appointments delayed 30 to 90 days was roughly the same, but the number of appointments that take longer than 90 days to complete had nearly doubled.

The VA clinic in Farmington ranked sixth on a list of facilities where patients are most likely to face long delays. More than 14 percent of appointments there were delayed 31 days or longer. Clinics in Santa Fe and Rio Rancho and the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque also ranked near the top of the bad list. In New Mexico, the VA hospital and 13 rural clinics serve about 60,000 veterans.

Local VA officials say they’re sending a team to Farmington to investigate. And the local VA system has opened a phone line for veterans who face appointment delays.

While February data shows some improvement at most facilities, one would think more progress could have been made given the time and effort. Clearly, this system still isn’t healthy enough to deliver timely care to the men and women who have served their country and who deserve the treatment they were promised.

— Albuquerque Journal