Saturday, November 12, 2016

VA Hospital Taught Employees to Game Wait Times

Washington Free Beacon ^ | 11/11/16 | Morgan Chalfant

Employees at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Arizona were instructed to manipulate veterans’ wait times so they appeared shorter, a newly released investigation shows.
The agency’s inspector general substantiated allegations that managers at the Tuscon-based VA medical system told schedulers to “zero out” patient wait times, a scheduling practice that persisted in 2016 despite whistleblower reports of wait-time manipulation at the Phoenix VA that drew national outrage more than two years ago.
The VA inspector general report, publicly released on Wednesday, provides more evidence of bad scheduling practices that stretched beyond the Phoenix VA hospital.
The watchdog launched the investigation into the Ocotillo primary care clinic in the Southern Arizona VA System in response to allegations from a former employee in October 2014. The inspector general substantiated claims that employees were instructed to record zero-day wait times for patients by making the desired date the same as the appointment date, in violation of VA policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...

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