As reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader
For several years, the cardiology unit at the Manchester Veterans Affairs Medical Center was reporting that it scheduled 99-100 percent of its patients within 14 days of their seeking treatment.
If these numbers seemed too good to be true, it’s because they were.
VA employees were supposed to log when each patient sought an appointment, and when the next appointment was available. The difference between the two dates is the wait time. The Union Leader’s Mark Hayward reported this week employees were instructed to enter the next appointment date as the patient’s desired date, giving the false appearance of a zero wait time. The VA Office of Inspector General found that supervisors trained employees in this practice, even going so far as to “correct” records entered by employees who logged in a patient’s actual request.
The Manchester VAMC also kept track of veterans waiting for treatment on handwritten scraps of paper and refused to enter scheduling data in an Electronic Wait List maintained nationally. The center even turned away cardiology patients who couldn’t be scheduled within 14 days, telling primary care doctors to call back closer to when an appointment was available.
Covering up for long wait times made it look like the understaffed and overworked cardiology unit was doing just fine.
The OIG report finds that “No patient harm was identified” but there’s really no way to know. VA officials blinded themselves to the needs of veterans.
No comments:
Post a Comment