I want to start by noting that the committee has been particularly supportive as the staff and the oversight investigation subcommittee for their work on this issue and their work with our agency we consider it to be a Real Partnership and we are very grateful for this committees support. We have received a number of referrals from this committee and we appreciate your confidence and ability to work with the employees that your office refers. So thats one thing. Its already happening. We are doing everything that we possibly can. Weve set up a priority system and we free allocated staff to handle the va employee claims. But as the numbers increase its a very hard to keep up. We were at capacity before. In the retaliation cases now it exceeds 130, and the number as i mentioned continues to increase pretty much daily. We are an agency that has 120 employees more or less. We have jurisdiction for the statute for the reemployment rights act and we are working now on a demonstration for the
I appreciate what the secretary is doing with the restructuring and coming up with a strong internal audit system. However i must express that i am skeptical about how that is going to work. We have the whistleblower protection act but its not enforced. My concern burst of office we have heard so much testimony in thandthe committee about a cultf secrecy and culture of retaliation, and retaliation is a huge deterrent to hearing the complaints. So my first question is to you we heard theres been retaliation against employees. I encountered there is retaliation against patients who might feel they have a complaint against a facility. Are you aware of any retaliation against patients or veterans . I think thats a really important question. Im not aware of any retaliation in part because my Agency Jurisdiction is for employees to come forward with retaliation complaints or disclosures of waste, fraud, abuse or Health Safety problems. Someone could come to us if they thought that a patient
They were responsive to that. So now it is a certain amount of perception. And it also took a lot of experience for the providers for those who as a group spoke up and said this is not right. So i do think that this is appropriate. And i think a lot of times resources are placed in areas where there are too many resources and things. So again, it involves a solution very quickly. To quickly outcome i was trying to institute a position with what is being provided. So we had those two accurate measures, we can know which facility we are putting end, 15 hours or whatever, and the answer exists with more resources. And this includes the psychiatrist that i was monitoring and so there is a solution there that has more efficiency and its not just more resources. It. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Sir, you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I am grateful to all of you as well. Its interesting. Mr. Davis coming you said something i can relate to. But i have been h
Phoenix v. A. And i was responsible for any of what is going on the minute this hit the fan nationally i would be looking and trying to figure it out doubletime and make sure that my facility is the standard and that we raise the standard and that we reset the record and we are ace an example for the rest of the country. This committee has said we will not tolerate this. We are going to provide the best health care to our veterans. Have you seen anything that says what a turnaround. People have been fired. There is a ton of accountability. Have you seen anything about this in the last . The turnaround i have seen is in scheduling. The backlogs of been reduced. Patients of gotten phone calls from the v. A. They have done tremendous work getting veterans cross test. The problem is they only fix the problem that was in the media. They havent fixed the patient care problem. They are working on that for the satiety department. Theyre a are still administrators that refuse to address nursing