Dear President-elect Trump,
When you take office, you’ll inherit a Department of Veterans Affairs with serious systemic challenges. There are insurmountable medical appointment wait times, despite receiving more than $10 billion for the Veteran Choice program. The Veterans Crisis Line rolls calls over to a contracted call center that places some veterans contemplating suicide on hold for nearly 20 minutes, which is extremely detrimental because 20 veterans commit suicide each day. Your administration will also need to address a records management nightmare, reconciling nearly 2 million active records of veterans who are believed to be deceased, providing a plan for equitable relief for the family members of thousands of veterans who died waiting for care and rectifying unresolved system errors that continue to deny nearly 30,000 Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans healthcare benefits.
These and other VA problems have lingered for decades at the VA because of bureaucratic malfeasance, a culture that prides itself on a lack of accountability and an environment where employees are routinely pressured to falsify reports about the quality of healthcare at the request of management officials.
In the past, falsified information in these reports have been submitted to Congress and repeated in speeches delivered by President Obama to veterans organizations. I am confident some of these reports have already been shared with your transition team. This unscrupulous behavior not only impacts veteran access to care, it also obstructs congressional oversight and will surely hinder your administration’s efforts to reform the organization.
You campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp.” If Washington needs someone to drain the swamp, it’s fair to say the VA needs a secretary who can cleanse the organization of its current ills. In the past, many presidents viewed the secretary’s role as largely being a ceremonial morale booster rather than one of an operational executive.
Our agency doesn’t need another cheerleader at the helm. These difficult times call for a strong leader who knows the inner-workings of the organization that can hit the ground running with a plan for turning the agency around and is willing to hold poorly-performing and corrupt managers accountable for delaying veteran access to care.
Throughout your campaign for the presidency, you often spoke of the challenges facing the veteran community and the need to make radical changes to the VA. Many VA employees share your thoughts on the need for reform.
Despite obstacles facing the agency, most VA employees are hardworking and committed to fulfilling their obligation to serve our nation’s veterans. However, they can’t provide quality care to veterans without effective management at the top of the department and a leader in the White House who is truly committed to addressing the systemic challenges facing the department.
Scott Davis is a whistleblower who works at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
