Occasionally the VA has a little slip up. Member Loyal sends us this little tidbit from the Land of the Fruits, the Nuts and the Grapes:
SACRAMENTO, CA – The Department of Veterans Affairs is reviewing policies and procedures after a female veteran’s record was sent to a different veteran.
A Sacramento veteran, who spent 22 years in the Navy, requested her medical records be sent by certified mail.
The vet, who wants to remain anonymous, said when she opened the certified mail, “I noticed it wasn’t my name. It was a 10 page report of another female veteran. Name, address, phone number, the results of the exam that she went for.”
It didn’t stop there. The records also included her partial social security number, emergency contact information, deep medical history and more. The mail came from the VA’s Northern California Health Care System, and, according to the unintended recipient, it did not make the mistake a priority. “She wanted me to drive [the records] to them,” the vet said.
Northern California Health Care System representative Robin Jackson points to human error and said someone was going to drive over to the vet’s home to pick up the documents. “This is extremely unusual and we have never had this happen before,” Jackson said. “This is an isolated incident and was basically a human error. The envelope was inadvertently stuck to the other documents and put in place.”
Jackson also profusely apologized to the veteran whose information was sent to the wrong person and offered free credit monitoring. Staff members have also been talked to about the mix up, Jackson said.
By Nick Monacelli, nick@news10.net
Fortunately for us, the VA no longer needs to send these things to the shredder room. It’s only 42¢ now to dispose of them via the USPS. Thank you Loyal and keep sending these delicious morsels in.
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
I have asked the VA for my records14 times. I am looking for morning reports, SMR,
PCS, troop movement and assignments. They send me the same package every time. They send me 21 pages of records and six of those pages have another Vet’s name on them.
I bring this to the VA’s attention, and ask them to look in that Vet’s c-file for my records.
I get no response from the VA; and I thought they took these incedences seriously.
I’m sure it was merely a fluke. The VA is very assiduous and careful about filing and records. Being a paper system, it is immune to misfiling and the host of problems we routinely see in electronic files. Thank goodness you have an eagle eye or this would have hounded you to your dying day. I don’t suppose you got an apology or an “Oops”?
I recently requested my records and was very upset to find that some of the conditions that VA providers had been discussing with me were in the records I received even though I had denied having the problems or conditions. Various providers, over several years, had noted that I “was again denying” whatever it was or that I was not likely to benefit from counseling until I admitted to the various problems. For years I could not understand why I was being treated or talked to the manner I had been UNTIL I finally got back far enough to some very early records in which the full name of the actual person that had the problems was entered into the record. Somehow, at least to me, the reason I had refused to admit to the alcohol abuse and legal problems became quite clear. Further, I found that some of my problems and care was not entered into my records. I hope that poor vet received the care he needed and has not been too frustrated by attempts to treat him for the problems I have had.
Of course, the powers that be insisted that this could not have happened UNTIL records were checked using his barely similar last name that was found in my records and MATCHING last four of our otherwise different SSNs and it was confirmed that the early notations in my treatment history were indeed describing him!
In my case, it was in the computerized local records and further complicated by the full computerized records.
Wow. Utterly amazing. VA actually has an RO up and running on computerized VACOL records? Or do you mean the VHA’s VISTA computer records? The word has been that VA hoped to get a few testbed projects up this year at remote, backwater regional offices but I had not heard of any functional ones yet.
Your story is scary. I don’t know what to say accept tell your congressman–and maybe a journalist on or off the record. There’s got to be an outcry over these issues. I’ve read that about 100 current congressman are veterans now. That might help.
We’ve been waiting for records for 4-5 weeks. Based on these problems you’ve shared, I’m wonder when and if we’ll get them and what they’ll contain. What is a reasonable time to wait for records before writing for them again?
I received about 20 pages that were on file at the local VAMC within minutes of my request. It was limited coverage of about 7 years of treatments at that facility. I was told that it could take 4-8 weeks for the archived files to get to me but in less than 3 weeks I received a large packet of records that covered a lot of what I had been through for almost 30 years. I had also requested my C file and anything that was used in anyway in my evaluations. I have not yet received that but it has only been 5 weeks.
Within the VA record keeping system, they are trying to untangle the problem. I was told that on the top of each day’s entry there is supposed to be a series of numbers that who, what, where, when, and so on about the entry but on a number of the entries for my file the numbers were totally garbled and useless for tracking. In time, we will see what happens