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From Chuck Weber, your Veteran Service Officer... |
VA Ratings for 146 Medical Centers Released |
The move follows a USA TODAY investigation that revealed ratings for
146 VA medical centers for the first time earlier this month. VA
Secretary Bob McDonald complained at the time that their publication
across the USA TODAY Network caused “unwarranted distress” to veterans
and could dissuade them from getting care. But last week, according to an internal memo obtained by USA TODAY,
the agency posted updated ratings on its website and also included
indicators of whether hospitals were improving or declining, allowing
members of the public to see for the first time how their local VA
medical centers have been faring over time. The VA rates centers on a scale of one to five stars, with five being
the best and one being the worst, and bases the ratings on dozens of
factors, including death and infection rates and wait times. The newly posted ratings show VA hospitals in Albuquerque, Detroit
and Los Angeles received one star as of June 30, 2016, down from two
stars on Dec. 31, 2015. At the same time, the VA medical center in Fayetteville, Ark., jumped
from three stars to five, and the VA in Orlando, Fla., went from two
stars to four. “I am glad to see these ratings finally made public,” said Rep.
Martha Roby, R-Ala., who has been pushing for the release of more
detailed VA quality data for more than a year. “This not only helps
veterans know basic information about their health care options, it
allows stakeholders in the community and members of Congress to demand
better of the VA when improvement is needed.” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who wrote to the VA demanding the
release of five years’ worth of ratings following USA TODAY’s story,
said “it shouldn’t take news reports and public pressure for the VA to
make these ratings available to the public.” “These are important tools for veterans and the community to see
quality of care at the hospitals they depend on, and I hope this
transparency continues,” she said. Until USA TODAY’s story, Dingell did not know that the Detroit VA —
which is named after her husband, former congressman John Dingell — was
among the worst-rated in the country. She is now “working with
leadership at the Detroit VA to ensure the issues that led to the
facility’s poor star ratings are addressed and that our veterans are
receiving the best possible care they deserve.” Read more: The VA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment
Tuesday. VA officials have previously said the star ratings were an
internal improvement tool and not intended for the public because they
worried hospitals with one star would be unfairly tarnished. “To be clear, no VA medical facility is bad or failing,” McDonald
wrote in a letter to the editor of USA TODAY. In addition to star comparisons with other VA medical centers, the
newly posted data show whether centers have improved compared with their
own performance a year earlier. Five hospitals had declined in the year
ending June 30, 2016. They are facilities in El Paso and Hot Springs,
Texas; Fargo, N.D; San Diego, Calif.; and Tomah, Wis. The VA says on the new ratings web page that overall, 120 of the 146
medical centers showed improvement since 2015. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee, has been investigating the VA for
nearly two years — ever since the revelation in January 2015 that a
veteran had died after doctors at the Tomah VA prescribed him a fatal
cocktail of narcotics. “Let’s face it, none of this, none of these abuses — the wait times,
the opioids, these types of things — none of this would be known were it
not for a free press, people like yourself digging and publicizing it,”
Johnson said. “The natural tendency of any government bureaucracy,
probably I think any organization, any human being, quite honestly, is
not to be forthcoming, not to be transparent. Nobody wants to air their
dirty linen.” Johnson said he plans to continue in his committee to push for more
transparency to identify problems and then hopefully solve them. “It’s a
target-rich environment of things we have to deal with, the problems,
it’s like a mosquito in a nudist colony.” Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs
Committee, said the VA's release of quality data is a "positive
development" crucial for improvement, but the agency should have
released it long ago. "Imagine the hassle the department could have saved veterans,
employees and taxpayers if it would have just done the right thing and
made these ratings public from the start,” Miller said. Source: USA Today/Donovan Slack; 20 Dec 2016 |
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