(Newswire.net — May 30, 2014) Washington, D.C. — As soon as disturbing news was released from the Veterans Administration in Phoenix, there have been calls for Secretary Shinseki to resign.
“That breach of integrity is irresponsible, it is indefensible and unacceptable to me,” Shinseki stated. “I said when this situation began weeks to months ago and I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believed that. I no longer believe that. It is systemic.”
“I was too trusting of some, and I accepted as accurate reports that I now know to have been misleading with regard to patient wait times,” he said. “I can’t explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encounter during 38 years in uniform and so I will not defend it because it’s indefensible, but I can take responsibility for it and I do.”
Some of the proposed corrections to the system include eliminating wait times as a job performance metric (including bonuses), accelerating administration of care to veterans and asking Congress to fill VA leadership vacancies quickly.
Shinseki also began cleaning house firing a number of top VA administrators (especially Phoenix) and insisted that there were more to come.
This may just be the beginning.
There are now increasing calls for a criminal investigation into at times deadly delays in care at Veterans Affairs hospitals as U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania issued a statement saying 700 veterans had been placed on a primary care waiting list for doctor appointments at the Pittsburgh VA center, with some waiting since 2012.
This just seems to be another blunder and leadership failure for the Obama administration.
When will it end?
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/politics/va-hospitals-shinseki/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/va-secretary-eric-shinseki-resigns-obama-announces/story?id=23926277