As a former government employee, I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of good civil servants who try their best only to be derailed by bureaucrats or fledgling middle managers who are in over their heads. The situation at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has now been well-documented after courageous whistleblowers stepped forward to expose a truly mismanaged operation. In response to the public scrutiny and pressure to get things right, however, there are now claims that the VA is making disability payments to thousands of veterans without adequate evidence they deserve the benefits. [In full disclosure, Morgan & Morgan handles such claims on behalf of veterans.] According to recent testimony, the VA could make unsupported payments to veterans totaling about $371 million over the next five years for claims of 100 percent disability alone.
... there are now allegations that mail bins full of disability claims were ignored or shredded, and dates have been changed to make old claims appear new in order to falsely convey more timely performance by the VA.
Among the various problems reported, there are now allegations that mail bins full of disability claims were ignored or shredded, and dates have been changed to make old claims appear new in order to falsely convey more timely performance by the VA. One of the flaws in applying private world practices like performance metrics in government or civil service settings is that employees or mid-level managers are often ill-equipped and under-trained, along with poorly financed, to develop or meet the metrics.
In essence, they are set up to fail. Human nature being what it is, however, staffers or management develop mechanisms to avoid or offset failure. In this case, VA workers apparently decided that since they could not meet the performance expectations for timely processing, they would ignore or destroy part of their intakes. Luckily, this situation is now exposed, and acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson admits that the VA “has lost the trust of veterans and the American people as a result of widespread treatment delays for people seeking health care and falsified records to cover up those delays.”
Stunningly, the acting Secretary also admitted that the agency “has created an environment where workers are afraid to raise concerns or offer suggestions for fear of retaliation and has failed to hold employees accountable for wrongdoing or negligence.” In his opinion, the VA “has devoted too many resources to meeting performance metrics...that were subject to manipulation and may not accurately reflect quality of care.” If the VA were a private hospital group their leader would never make this admissions while the scandal was playing out and the ramifications for this conduct would be severe.