The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has written extensively about service delivery problems impacting veterans at the Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta. Log on to myAJC.com to read the AJC’s previous coverage of this issue.
A senior VA executive whose duties include overseeing the troubled national health enrollment office in Atlanta is leaving the agency in an abrupt announcement put out by his executive assistant Thursday.
Philip Matkovsky, the Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations & Management, oversaw the national health enrollment system that was at the root of a problem that led to hundreds of thousands of veterans ending up in an application backlog.
That problem, first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, later came up in a Congressional hearing and was one of the areas the VA’s Office of Inspector General has been investigating for months. That investigation is nearing completion, but a report has not been issued.
Matkovsky answered his cell phone Thursday afternoon, but said he couldn’t talk because he was in a meeting. An agency spokesperson would not comment, but issued this statement to the AJC:
“Mr. Philip Matkovsky, current Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management, will leave federal service effective January 2, 2014 after six years of service. Matkovsky has been instrumental in leading key contracting, capital asset management, access and VA Choice initiatives. VA is grateful to Mr. Matkovsky for his service. VA will announce Matkovsky’s replacement soon.”
Matkovsky, who joined VA in 2008 and previously worked as private consultant to the agency, rose rapidly to become one of the most powerful executives overseeing a vast bureaucracy of health care operations. His portfolio included the Chief Business Office and its Atlanta outpost, the national Health Eligibility Center (HEC). He also was over procurement, logistics and clinical operations for the VA.
The Chief Business Office has also been overseeing the VA’s new Choice Card Program that’s critical to the success of the VA reform legislation passed earlier this year.
His departure was announced to other senior leaders Thursday afternoon in an email from his executive assistant, Deesha Brown. With a subject line that said “Farewell to Mr. Philip Matkovsky.”
It mentioned none of the specifics about his exit date or where he was going except to say he would “pursue opportunity in the private sector.”
“We would like to thank Mr. Matkovsky for his service and commitment to the mission of VHA,” she said. “He will be deeply missed. We wish him all the best in his new endeavor.”
Senior officials in the Chief Business Office and the HEC in recent weeks have been bracing for the conclusion of the inspector general’s investigation. The review follows the AJC investigation that revealed problems with the 2010 roll out of a new online application that promised to make it faster and easier for veterans to access health care.
But glitches in the online system resulted in the opposite of what was promised. That exacerbated a backlog of veteran health applications that this year had climbed to nearly 900,000. In 2012, those figures included more than 47,000 veterans who were deceased and showed up on the pending rolls, raising the possibility that some veterans died waiting for care.
In response to the AJC’s questions, Matkovsky told the newspaper in August he had directed the HEC staff in Atlanta to devise a plan to contact all veterans with pending applications in the system. It’s unclear where that review stands.
One of Matkovsky’s loudest critics has been Scott Davis, a program specialist at the HEC, who has been the chief whistleblower at the enrollment center. He mentioned Matkovsky by name during a July Congressional hearing on whistleblower retaliation before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Davis said he was pleased that Matkovsky is leaving the agency and hopes his replacement will deal with the problems he accused Matkovsky of ignoring.
“The decision is in the best interest of the veteran community,” Davis said. “His tenure has been marred by failure after failure of contract mismanagement to mismanagement of VA programs.”
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