Eric Shinseki faces tough questions on VA scandal, vows not to resign
Shinseki faces tough questions on VA scandal, vows to ‘accomplish a mission’
(about 7 hours later)
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki testified before a Senate panel Thursday that allegations of treatment delays and cover-ups at VA medical centers make him “mad as hell,” and he vowed to fix any problems documented by an inspector general’s investigation.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki stared, at times impassively, at a panel of senators who repeatedly hammered him Thursday over long waits for veterans seeking care and reports of coverups at VA medical centers.
Shinseki faced tough questioning by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which summoned him to provide answers about recent claims that VA health clinics in Phoenix and Fort Collins, Colo., used elaborate schemes to hide records of patients who waited too long for care that meets the department’s goals. His testimony comes 10 days after the American Legion called for his resignation over the VA troubles.
When it was his turn to speak, Shinseki vowed to remain in office as long as he has President Obama’s support. He told the lawmakers that the allegations of impropriety made him “mad as hell.”
In response to a question from Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who asked Shinseki why he should not resign as veterans affairs secretary, the retired Army general said he took the job “to make things better for veterans” and to “provide as much care and benefits for the people I went to war with” and other veterans as he could. “This is not a job,” he said. “I’m here to accomplish a mission that I think they critically deserve and need.”
“I could use stronger language, Mr. Chairman, but in deference to the committee, I won’t,” Shinseki told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Shinseki vowed to remain in office until he meets his goals for improving the department’s performance or until President Obama tells him it is time to go.
The VA medical system, which conducts more than 230,000 appointments every day, is the country’s largest and has been dogged for years by complaints from veterans about months-long waits for appointments. Shinseki, a former Army general who was wounded in Vietnam, was brought in by Obama to change VA’s culture and make it more responsive to veterans’ needs.
“Any allegation like this . . . makes me mad as hell,” Shinseki said in an opening statement. “But at the same time, it also saddens me.” He said that if any allegations are proved by the inspector general’s investigation, “they are completely unacceptable — to me, to veterans, to the vast majority of VA employees. If any are substantiated by the inspector general, we will act.” But he said it was important to allow the inspector general to complete the review.
“I came here to make things better for veterans,” Shinseki told the senators Thursday. “This is not a job. I’m here to accomplish a mission.”
Senators on the committee, however, complained that allegations of treatment delays are hardly new.
Shinseki, however, has faced enormous challenges that have often overwhelmed the sprawling VA bureaucracy. In addition to contending with a growing number of older veterans, the department has had to provide care and services for a new generation of Iraq and Afghan war veterans who are filing disability claims and seeking treatment for mental and physical wounds at rates significantly higher than those who fought in previous wars.
In response to the scandal, Obama has dispatched one of his closest advisers to oversee a review of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Rob Nabors, a White House deputy chief of staff, will work with the VA temporarily to help assess its practices and develop recommendations on how veterans’ hospitals can increase access to timely care, the White House announced Wednesday.
Now, Shinseki is being buffeted by many of the same problems that have bedeviled his predecessors.
In opening the hearing, Sen. Bernard Sanders ((I-Vt.), the committee chairman, said, “I take these allegations very seriously.” He pledged to hold additional hearings after the inspector general’s office in Phoenix issues a thorough report on the allegations.
The most recent series of scandals, which have stoked calls for Shinseki to resign, began with allegations that VA health clinics in Phoenix and Fort Collins, Colo., used elaborate schemes to hide the records of patients who waited months for care.
But Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), saying she is “very frustrated” by the issue, charged that the Veterans Affairs Department “has repeatedly failed to address wait times for health care.” She added: “These recent allegations are not new issues. They are deep system-wide problems, and they grow more concerning every day.” She said there was “no reason to wait for the Phoenix report before acting on the larger problems.”
Before Shinseki began his testimony Thursday, Republicans and Democrats took turns expressing their deep dismay with the department and, in some cases, Shinseki’s leadership.
Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the top Republican on the panel, said in an opening statement that Shinseki “should have been aware that VA was facing a national scheduling crisis.” He added, “VA’s leadership has either failed to connect the dots or failed to address this ongoing crisis, which has resulted in patient harm and even death.”
“It seems that every day there are new allegations,” said Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the top Republican on the panel.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said there were allegations that “some 40 veterans” in Phoenix died while waiting for care. He charged that the Obama administration “failed to respond in an effective manner.” McCain cited “endless wait times” and “mountains of bureaucratic red tape,” adding: “No one should be treated this way in a country as great as ours. . . . And we should all be ashamed.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) spoke of “systemwide problems,” saying: “This needs to be a wake-up call for the department.”
In testimony before the committee by a subsequent panel, top officials in the inspector general’s office of the Veterans Affairs Department disputed the reports that 40 veterans died awaiting appointments in the Phoenix VA Health Care System facility. Acting Inspector General Richard J. Griffin said his office has compiled a list of 17 deceased patients, but he said none of them died as a result of waiting for treatment.
The VA inspector general’s office is investigating the allegations made against health clinics in Phoenix, and Shinseki promised that he would act swiftly and aggressively if the charges proved true.
John Daigh, assistant VA inspector general for health-care inspections, told the committee that there were delays in care at the Phoenix facility, several quality standards were not met, and some patients were harmed. However, he said, “to draw the conclusion between patient harm and death has so far been a tenuous connection.”
But Shinseki, who has a reputation for cautious and steady leadership, stopped short of making any promises to fire senior VA leaders or change his management team. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself or ahead of the IG here,” he said. “I want to see the results of the audit.”
Griffin said he expects to conclude the investigation and produce a final report by August. He said he might be able to offer preliminary findings before then, as long as they do not adversely affect the potential prosecution of “possible criminal violations.”
While there were no demands for Shinseki’s departure at the hearing, Republican congressional candidates on the campaign trail began raising concerns about the secretary, possibly making it more difficult for lawmakers to continue supporting him.
Republican lawmakers want Shinseki to detail how long he took to order the preservation of electronic and paper evidence related to the purported delays. House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) criticized the VA last week for taking eight days to comply with his early-April request to protect the records.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), a member of the Veterans’ Affairs panel, expressed tenuous support for Shinseki. “I like Eric an awful lot, but I can’t believe the lack of knowledge of some of the things that were obvious and apparent within the system,” he said. “He’s either been ill-served by his senior leadership — which I think is part of the systematic problem — or has been oblivious to what’s been going on around him.”
Sanders insisted in his opening statement that the committee should wait for the VA inspector general’s office to finish its investigation before deciding what to do about the alleged problems.
In recent weeks, reports have spread of VA hospital officials falsifying records or gaming the system to make waiting times appear shorter. The reports began appearing as long ago as 2010, when a senior VA official sent a memo to regional directors warning of “inappropriate scheduling practices” designed to make waiting times appear shorter.
“If we’re going to do our job in a proper and responsible way, we need to get the facts and not rush to judgment,” he said.
In response to the growing scandal, Obama has dispatched one of his closest advisers to oversee a review of the department. Rob Nabors, a White House deputy chief of staff, will work with VA temporarily to help assess its practices and develop recommendations on how veterans’ hospitals can increase access to timely care, the White House said Wednesday.
Sanders added that the panel needs to look at VA health care in the context of health care nationwide. He said VA clinics are similar to hospitals throughout the United States in that they have struggled to find adequate numbers of primary-care physicians.
The move, however, wasn’t nearly enough to quiet VA critics on both sides of the aisle in Congress or the veterans groups such as the American Legion and Concerned Veterans for America that have called for Shinseki’s resignation.
The chairman also addressed concerns about reported preventable deaths at VA health centers, noting that medical errors in hospitals are the third-leading cause of deaths in the United States, accounting for more than 200,000 patient deaths a year.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) complained that the department’s failure has produced a “crisis of confidence” in the veterans community. “No one should be treated this way in a country as great as ours.” he said.
“There is no question in my mind that VA health care has serious problems, but it is not the case that the rest of health care in America is just wonderful,” he said.
“The standard practice at the VA seems to be to hide the truth in order to look good,” said Murray. “That has got to change once and for all.”
Sanders said he wants to examine VA staffing levels and whether the department is allocating its resources properly.
Shinseki, meanwhile, did not promise the kind of broad, sweeping and systemic changes that senators and some veterans groups had hoped for. Instead, while expressing concern about allegations of wrongdoing, he defended the quality of care that VA provides and noted that veterans’ overall satisfaction with their medical treatment is “equal to or better than the rankings for private-sector hospitals.”
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said he agreed with Sanders that there should be no “rush to judgment” in the case. “But we should have a rush to accountability,” he said.
Ed O’Keefe and William Branigin contributed to this report.
The VA has placed three Phoenix executives on administrative leave as the review takes place, and Shinseki has ordered face-to-face audits of the scheduling systems at all the department’s medical centers.
The scandal erupted when a former VA doctor alleged that the department’s Phoenix VA hospital developed a secret system to hide treatment delays, possibly affecting dozens of patients who died while waiting for care. CNN first reported the claims late last month, and other whistleblowers have substantiated them, according to the cable news network.
A later report from the VA’s Office of the Medical Inspector said the Fort Collins medical center falsified appointment records to give the impression that staff doctors had seen patients within the department’s goal of 14 to 30 days, USA Today reported.
In an interview Wednesday, Sanders said he wanted to know more about VA staffing levels and whether additional personnel could help the clinics provide care in a more timely fashion.
The committee chairman also said he would examine the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days to determine whether that time frame is realistic, considering the VA’s current budget limitations and workload.
“I don’t know there are enough staff to provide the health care veterans need,” he said. “We have to take a look at that.”
Obama’s 2015 budget proposal asks Congress to provide $56 billion for veteran medical care. That amount would represent an increase of 3 percent compared to the enacted level for 2014.
Sanders noted that the VA health system generally receives high marks from patients who use it. The American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that the network, which serves more than 8 million veterans, achieved scores equal to or better than those in the private sector last year.
In terms of what Sanders expects from the VA at this point, he said he wants the department to be responsive to congressional inquiries and to take action if the investigation uncovers wrongdoing or mismanagement.
“They are funded by taxpayers, and the VA has to be responsive to the concerns that these committees are raising,” he said. “If there are managers around the country who are not doing their jobs, then those people have to be held accountable.”
Republicans on the committee challenged Shinseki over bonuses that have gone to executives overseeing troubled health facilities in locations such as Pittsburgh, where a Legionnaires disease outbreak killed several patients in 2012, and in Atlanta, where a federal audit determined that the clinic there was not sufficiently addressing patient safety.
The House last month passed legislation to ban bonuses for senior VA executives in response to the department’s recent problems. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), said the measure is necessary because of “systematic leadership failures.”
