Today the Department of Veterans Affairs is the United States’ second biggest federal department in terms of discretionary spending. It oversees America’s largest health care system, and also offers a broad array of other services: education benefits, vocational training, home loans, social services, adaptive sports, cemetery burials, and much more.
Despite all this, our nation’s aspiration to provide its retired warriors with care and support for the rest of their days is not being fully achieved.
Some examples:
· Women veterans are the fastest growing group of veterans
right now, but the VA’s gender-specific medical care has
not kept pace – from maternal care services to the
growing recognition that military sexual trauma (MST)
exists and that veterans who are survivors of sexual
assault are entitled to professional help.
· Veteran homelessness is a national scourge – after serving
their country, when vets come home they end up
accounting for over 10 percent of the adult homeless
population across the nation.
· Substance abuse is another problem, particularly when it is
tied in with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to
the VA’s National Center for PTSD, about 1 in 10 veterans
who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have a problem with
alcohol or other drugs.
· Veteran suicides are an ongoing crisis. In recent years, the
overall suicide rate among veterans has been about one
and a half times higher than the rate for non-veteran
Americans, with the suicide rates of women veterans more
than twice as high. Annual veteran deaths by suicide
outnumber annual combat deaths in the military by a ratio
of nearly 280:1.
· Then add the VA’s notorious backlog problems into the
mix. During Obama’s time in office, a whistleblower
called attention to the disgracefully long wait times for
veterans seeking medical attention through the VA. The
national scandal compelled then-VA Secretary Eric
Shinseki to resign.
Seeking to alleviate the problem, Congress passed Veterans Choice legislation that allowed veterans to seek compensated care outside of the VA system. But midway through the Trump years, the whistleblower who’d made the initial charge regarding wait times was back with another complaint: a new backlog had developed – of vets waiting to see doctors outside the system.
By 2019, the VA was tapping the brakes on the Veterans Choice program and transitioning to a new scheme.
Last year, the Trump administration rolled out another initiative to try to streamline the VA’s billing and administrative services. Senior Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner was an enthusiastic proponent of the $16 billion Electronic Health Records Modernization project. But the preliminary deployment of EHRM at VA facilities in Spokane and Las Vegas quickly hit some potholes.
Employees in those facilities who have had a chance to work with the new system are asking tough questions about EHRM’s design, user-friendliness and management structure. The system is currently under review.
At McDonough’s confirmation hearing in February, Senators on both sides of the aisle expressed frustration with the VA’s various glitches over time, and McDonough pledged to set things right.
“The VA has a proud history of data science,” he said, striking an optimistic tone and elaborating on the way digital records might be used to track and measure benefits, and to guide veterans to lifelong services offered by the VA.
Old veterans playing cribbage at Soldiers' Home, Washington, D.C., ca. 1900