Few VA brass have been fired.
I'll buy that. It has been two years since all of this broke loose. It took me nearly 3 years to get an LPN removed from the VA and then it was a resignation instead of termination. Between the union, the merit board and then EEOC hearings I am surprised we were able to get rid of him at all.
I can't even imagine trying to fire some of the "brass" who can afford lawyers, it will be tied up in the courts for years.
It isn't only the worker bees it is hard to get rid of, we had a mid-level manager that took just as much effort and when the mediation was done she resigned with a nice enough paycheck to stop working and complete her Doctorate without having to worry about working.
You also hear about Vets receiving large bills for care after opting to use the Choice program. While the VA is blamed, Tricare has oversight for that program so we have to spend tons of time in communication with Tricare to straighten things out.
Wait times I don't know about, I had thought they had improved from anecdotal things I have heard. I also hear the same things about non-VA care. As an example I have a friend who needs to see a sleep specialist and possibly get a sleep study. He has "good" insurance but the earliest he could get in to see the guy he needs to see is March, and that is just an eval not the sleep study. You don't hear much about wait times outside the VA because people accept them and are not vocal about it. The VA patient population is very vocal about wait times, and they should be.
I work in a fairly small facility, a few inpatient beds (24 medical and 10 Behavioral health) and the rest is outpatient. We serve an area that stretches from the eastern side of the Cascades to Western Montana (64,000 square miles). Because I happen to run reports that deal with numbers I can tell you we have about 55,000 outpatient encounters a month. That includes everything we do, not just primary care but also dental, PT, eyes, behavioral health and all of the specialty outpatient clinics. We also have two outlying community based clinics and 4 or 5 rural health clinics that are contracted to see Vets in their hometowns or close to them.
Does the VA need work, of course it does but you are also talking an ingrained bureaucracy that is going to take time to tear down. That is the way of the government, changes do not come fast or easy, but we are plodding along and trying to make changes. McDonald has been good for improving morale within the agency and that in turn makes for a better attitude when caring for Vets. There is still a long ways to go, but we are headed in the right direction.
bob
