Publisher's Synopsis
During our proceedings this evening, we will assess the Department of Veterans Affairs efforts to increase the capacity and efficiency of medical facility operations and ultimately to improve access to care for veteran patients who have been facing unacceptably long wait times at VA facilities across the country. Important to those efforts is the status of VA's Accelerating Access to Care Initiative, which was launched in late May in response to the Department's current wait time crisis, and information released last Thursday suggests that it, in coordination with VA's other efforts, has led to the scheduling of approximately 200,000 appointments from May 15th to June 1st. Investigations by the Inspector General's office and the Department itself have proven that the VA healthcare system suffers from a systemic lack of integrity. Data manipulation and patient waiting times were found to be widespread, and given that, how can Congress, the American taxpayer and our Nation's veterans and their families have any confidence in these latest numbers that the Department has released?
