File this one under “We’re paddlin’ as fast as we can!” Member Randy sends us this from his sleuthing everywhere. Sometimes PR flacks tend to be too exuberant and overstate what they were given to disseminate to the mainstream media grazers. Or, on the other hand, sometimes they tip their hand too far and you see the cards. The last paragraph is usually where the meat is.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 11, 2012          

VA Announces Aggressive National Recruitment Effort to Hire Mental Health Professionals

WASHINGTON (June 11, 2012)- Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki recently announced the department would add approximately 1,600 mental health clinicians as well as nearly 300 support staff to its existing workforce to help meet the increased demand for mental health services.  The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has developed an aggressive national recruitment program to implement the hiring process quickly and efficiently.

“The mental health and well-being of our brave men and women who have served the Nation is the highest priority for this department,” said Secretary Shinseki.  “We must ensure that all Veterans seeking mental health care have access to timely, responsive and high-quality care.”

VA has developed an aggressive national mental health hiring initiative to improve recruitment and hiring, marketing, education and training programs, and retention efforts for mental health professionals, to include targeted recruitment in rural and highly-rural markets. This will help VA to meet existing and future demands of mental health care services in an integrated collaborative team environment and continue to position VA as an exemplary workplace for mental health care professionals.

It is critical for VA to proactively engage psychiatrists and other mental health care providers about the vital mission to deliver high-quality mental health services, especially for returning combat Veterans.

“The VA mental health community is aggressively transforming the way mental health care services are provided to the Veteran population. As the mental health care workforce continues to increase, VA is committed to improving Veterans’ access to services, especially for at-risk Veterans,” said VA’s Under Secretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel.

The national recruitment program provides VHA with an in-house team of highly skilled professional recruiters employing private sector best practices to fill the agency’s most mission critical clinical and executive positions.  The recruitment team consists of 21 national, dedicated health care recruiters targeting physician and specialty health care occupations. These recruiters also understand the needs of Veterans because each member is a Veteran.

VHA has also established a hiring and tracking task force to provide oversight for this initiative to move the process forward expeditiously in a focused manner to ensure challenges, issues, or concerns are addressed and resolved.  This task force is accountable for reporting progress in hiring of mental health professionals in these occupations: psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, mental health technicians, marriage and family therapists and licensed professional counselors.

VHA anticipates the majority of hires will be selected within approximately six months and the most “hard-to-fill” positions filled by the end of the second quarter of FY 2013. VA has an existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff that includes nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.

Not wishing to be the nattering nabob of negativity and spoil Gen. Shinseki’s parade, but…

>If “the majority of the new hires will be selected in approximately six months” is vAspeak for their normal delays, shouldn’t we translate that more vaguely into  “Coming to you sometime  in this lifetime?”

> If, indeed, all these new hires manage to be selected, does “selected” mean they will have to be trained by existing personnel, and, if so, when does vA anticipate them coming on line?

> What does vA intend to do, during this hiring spree, with the fact that numerous, recently separated, unemployed Veterans seem to be  developing obsessive/compulsive disorders and chewing on the ends of firearms-thus expiring from lead poisoning?

>At the current, published rate of 1 veteran every 80 minutes taking his own life,  is the vA aware  that there will be approximately 108 veteran deaths by suicide in the interim while these new mental health personnel are “selected” in the next six months (let alone commissioned to act)?

> Has the vA anticipated what the delay of implementing this may have on the Homeless Veteran population, many of whom have mental disorders, too?

> Re the “hard positions” being filled by June of 2013, a year hence, could the vA be more precise as to how many personnel fall into the “hard positions” classification versus “soft” ones?

>Could the VHA describe the the job title and duties of “soft” positions and the approximate pay scale range of same? “Hard” positions?

These might have been the hard questions asked had this been issued live at a podium by Ms. Hickey at 810 Vermont yesterday.  Fortunately, being a press release from VASEC “recently”, it has no provenance, no immediate author to scapegoat and thus escapes scrutiny for content. This is in keeping with their new “non confrontational” posture-a win/win for vA and Vets.

Well, I know I’ll breathe easier and sleep soundly tonight knowing vA at least has a plan! Perhaps vA should ask the homeless Vet on the street what his take is on all this?