Breakfast of VAOIG Champions

As predicted, every weekday news cycle brings a new revelation of misfeasance which seems to be metastasizing into malfeasance at VAMCs nationwide. Unlike the commercial, they are not on our side. And much like the commercials for Cheez-It®, the powers that be at the VA Central Office are shouting “I can’t hear you”. 

This was sent in by Member Frank who seems to find all the really damaging VA revelations. He must never sleep. I predicted this was not indigenous to  just Phoenix three weeks ago and it seems I’m fairly well vindicated. Sadly, I have never ever hoped I was wrong so fervently when I made that statement. Alas, we are going to find to our dismay that this is a de facto process known to all but politely not mentioned in mixed company (read Vets).

Hold onto to your brain buckets. This is going to be a wild ride. I will also predict a land office rush to fire up the excuse mill and begin exonerating VAMC hierarchy who were simply trying to “triage” the system to keep it from being overwhelmed. It’ll result in the “little people”- those who do scheduling- being taken out to slaughter so as to protect the big guys. SOS-DD as we used to say.

Read my lips. You’ll hear “Well, yes. We did try to get everyone in to see a doctor or have scheduled exams in a timely manner. Apparently, the front office people misunderstood our intentions and went much further than they were authorized to, resulting in appointment protocol being compromised. We are scheduling retraining to avoid this problem in the future and new regulations are being implemented to prevent this from ever happening henceforth. We apologize if it resulted in some less-than-favorable outcomes for a small number of Veterans. Please bear with us while we correct this inequity and a warm thank you to those who pointed out the deficiency.”

As predicted, this just came in. VAOIG’s initial response to the Phoenix “scare”.