Dr. David Walker, appointed by the Department of Veterans Affairs in June to oversee most hospitals and clinics in Georgia and Alabama and all of South Carolina, has been sizing up the extent of the problems he was brought in to solve.
His early assessment: Telephone wait times for veterans are falling and medical supplies are being managed better, but patients still aren’t getting swift access to doctors.
The Southeast Network is the fourth largest in the U.S. with 1.2 million veterans and some hospitals that have struggled with significant problems. The largest, the Atlanta VA Healthcare System in Decatur, has had a months-long shutdown of operating rooms, the loss and waste of expensive medical implants and long delays in moving veterans through health care. The last permanent director was placed on leave in late 2019 and retired soon after.
Walker previously directed the VA’s Jackson, Mississippi, medical center and its clinics overseeing the health of 45,000 veterans. After he arrived in 2014, the hospital moved from a one star rating (the lowest in a now outdated VA rating system) to three stars (five was tops) before it fell back to two stars. Under a new rating system, the hospital received its most recent overall score in 2019 of 68, which is 1.3 points higher than the average for all hospitals in that region and 3.2 points below the national average.
Walker, in an interview, pointed to some successes here that began even before he arrived. The Atlanta system has vaccinated 90% of staff and 55% of veterans who use it — both higher than the Georgia averages. It amped up its telehealth programs during the pandemic and has conducted 170,000 online appointments.
The Atlanta hospital installed new software in the phone system — long a sore spot for veterans who complain of hours-long waits and recorded responses when trying to get help. The number of calls dropped has decreased by 800%, according to information from his staff. The VA is also hiring more operators, he said.
The local hospital also added a software system in April that tracks surgical implants that had been expiring or getting lost. It has helped the Atlanta system catch 84 devices such as heart stents prior to their expiration, according to VA records.
Walker said he is focusing on continuing problems, such as Community Care, which was supposed to speed access to medical care by farming veterans out to non-VA facilities. There were about 36,000 cases in Atlanta last spring in process but not closed out. Similar-sized VA hospitals had 4,000 to 12,000 cases. There are now 39,000 cases in Atlanta.
Atlanta’s numbers are some of the highest out there, he acknowledged.
Part of the problem has been lack of staff, he said. There are about 45 vacancies out of 157 positions in the regional community care department. The pandemic also caused staff absences, and then there was a rush of veterans when society began opening back up, adding to the backlog. The VA is recruiting new workers, and workers on leave are due back in early September.
“There has been improvement, but they are not where they need to be,” Walker said.
He said he plans to implement a new staff management program across the region that helped drive good results and improve accountability in Mississippi.
If results do not improve, regional staff are “not in the right seat or they need to learn how to do these things. Or else, you know, they’re not the right place,” Walker said.
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