Veterans Affairs Struggles To Do Right Even by the Vets it Employs
Sherri Richards felt desperate.
She had seen her car repossessed and the contents of her storage unit sold. The Vancouver, Wash., veteran of the war in Afghanistan was jobless, depressed and uncertain of her future. She had gone without pay for a year and thought she might become homeless.
“I was pretty much a wreck,” she said.
Richards’ case illustrates a little-discussed problem with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. She is more than another disabled vet jousting with the agency over her benefits: She is an insider, a veteran who works for the agency, but has been forced to battle it over employment issues.
And she isn’t alone.
Interviews and records show the agency charged with caring for military veterans has had problems doing so inside as well as out. Richards and other Portland-area VA employees who are veterans say they have contended with uncaring managers, a pass-the-buck mentality and ponderous systems that can’t seem to accommodate their circumstances. They believe the agency has deeper cultural problems than have already come to light with this year’s string of scandals over delayed appointments and claims backlogs.
The local employee-vets say they’ve had to fight battles they should never have had to fight, against an employer that claims it is dedicated to serving veterans above all.
While they have individual concerns, they also worry the agency’s dysfunction damages its ability to recruit and retain much-needed doctors, nurses, claims officers and other staffers. This is a critical concern at a time of rising demand from aging veterans of earlier wars and from veterans returning from wars with increasingly complex medical and psychological issues.
Today, Richards is working again as a nurse in the VA Portland Health Care System. But she returned to work only after fighting for her job for almost a year, after she was terminated by the hospital system following an extended active-duty stint in Afghanistan, Fort Lewis and Salem.
The agency could easily have returned her to her nursing job after her extended stint of active duty if any organization should understand and accommodate military service, you’d think it would be the VA but instead it “made life miserable,” she said.
Problems with the VA’s culture
This has been a rough year for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The agency has come under fire following reports of widespread neglect or mistreatment of veterans who sought VA medical care. These stories, which include cases of veterans who died waiting for appointments set by schedulers who were gaming the system, were matched by stories about bonuses and promotions for managers who concealed problems or looked the other way.
These practices scandalized veterans, advocates and Congress, leading to the resignation of former Secretary Eric Shinseki and passage of a $16.3 billion bipartisan reform bill.
Robert McDonald, the new secretary, acknowledged to the Senate Veterans Affairs committee in September that the agency has a culture problem. But he said it can be changed with “urgent action.”
“While there is much that is going well, there have been systematic failures, which suggest that some in the organization have lost track of the mission and the core values,” he said.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., who this year conducted a series of veterans-focused town halls in the First District, said she fielded a wide range of concerns, from mental health treatment to delayed benefits determinations. As to the big questions about the agency’s culture, “if people are more concerned about keeping their jobs than about taking care of veterans,” she said, “they shouldn’t be there.”
A key portion of the reform bill were provisions making it easier for VA officials to fire underperforming, incompetent or toxic managers. Last month, the agency fired the director of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System for his division’s repeated, documented failings. He was the first administrator fired under the terms of the new law. Another, the director of Pittsburgh’s VA Healthcare System, was fired this week for “conduct unbecoming a senior executive” and “wasteful spending,” the VA announced Thursday.
Even with targeted firings, though, it takes a long time to change the culture of an agency as big as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yet insiders say the problems must be fixed.
The Veterans Health Administration “is losing talented, committed individuals who continue to transfer to other agencies or are harassed to the point of resignation,” Scott Davis, a VA program specialist in Atlanta told the House Committee on Veterans Affairs this summer.
Working for the VA wears people down, said Amanda Schroeder, a ratings specialist in the Portland VA Regional Office. She’s a disabled military veteran who continues to fight her human resources office following an extended unpaid leave she took this year to deal with treatment for breast cancer.
“Nobody joins the VA to get rich or for glory,” she said. Instead, they work there because “we all have nothing but love for veterans.”
Many stopped working there, she added, when they found the organization’s actions didn’t match its stated mission “to care for him who shall have borne the battle.”
Tags: Veterans News
