FOR RELEASE: October 01, 2001

EVANS: VETERANS WAITING TOO LONG
FOR VA MEDICAL CARE

 BEST PRACTICES CAN REDUCE WAITING TIMES
BETTER VA MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP NEEDED 

Washington, DC – Congressman Lane Evans (IL), Senior Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, today released a report on the amount of time veterans wait to obtain health care at Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) clinics.  The report, prepared by the General Accounting Office (GAO) at Evans’ request, indicated VA was failing to comply with its own standard for timely access to health care, particularly in clinics for specialty care.  VA’s timeliness standard for veterans is 30 days to obtain an appointment.  Based on site visits GAO investigators found that, in the 10 medical centers they visited, most primary care clinics met VA’s standard for timely access to care, but only about 1/3 of VA’s specialty clinics met the standard.  VA estimates that about half of all of its clinics fail to meet its timeliness standard.  While the new report did not assess waiting times for care in VA’s community based outpatient clinics, some of these clinics have reported veterans waiting one year or longer to be enrolled in the health care system and become eligible for care.

Evans charged the Congress’s watchdog, GAO, with looking at “best practices” underway at VA medical centers across the country to reduce veterans’ waiting times for medical care.  “I remain concerned that valuable ‘lessons learned’ at some medical centers to reduce waiting times are not used to benefit veterans at other medical centers”, said Evans.  “If VA consistently and systematically shared information about practices used to successfully reduce waiting times, other medical centers struggling with the same problems could benefit from this information.”  

Evans noted that GAO had concluded some VA medical centers have made significant progress in reducing waiting times for clinical care by making more efficient use of their staff and ensuring that effective scheduling programs are in place.   GAO also noted that referral guidelines seemed to reduce waiting times for specialty care at the studied clinics.  The agency recommended that the VA create national guidelines for this purpose.  VA agreed with GAO’s recommendations and has hired a contractor to share successful strategies with VA medical centers nationwide.  Evans said he would closely monitor VA efforts to provide information on practices that reduce veterans waiting times and will ask for periodic progress reports.  

Evans expressed his hope that the findings of his report would be used to improve the timeliness of health care for veterans.  “Too often, with veterans’ benefits, we see a ‘benefit delayed is a benefit denied’.  VA staff must learn from each other and share successes in order to help more veterans.  I expect VA to use GAO’s good work in determining common root causes of waiting times and to make significant improvements in the timely delivery of health care to veterans,” said Evans.   

The report released today follows an earlier report Evans called for to assess the extent of VA’s problems providing veterans timely access to VA outpatient care.  The first report determined that data used by VA could not be relied upon to determine the extent or the causes of excessive waiting times for clinic care.  Joining Evans in requesting the latest report was Veterans’ Committee Chairman, Chris Smith of New Jersey. 

To obtain a copy of the report, VA Health Care:  More National Action Needed to Reduce Waiting Times, but Some Clinics Have Made Progress (GAO-01-953) please call (202) 512-6000 or visit the General Accounting Office’s website at http://www.gao.gov.

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