The Post editorial: Secret VA wait lists for mental health care put our veterans in need of treatment at further risk.
In the same month that our nation celebrated its veterans, a new federal investigation found that VA officials broke the rules by keeping extensive off-thebooks waiting lists for patients seeking mental-health therapy.
This is depressing news, and difficult to accept following the bruising lessons the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs should have learned after the discovery in 2014 of past wait-list violations in which 35 veterans died waiting for care.
The news comes as especially hurtful in Colorado, where the latest violations were discovered, although the problem likely was widespread.
The VA Office of Inspector General found that at facilities in Denver, Golden and Colorado Springs, officials didn’t follow protocol. The exact number of cases isn’t known, a result of improper record-keeping, but investigators found at least 3,775 individual entries on the unofficial list for group therapy. Investigators studied care at the facilities between October 2015 and September 2016.
The findings come four months after The Denver Post reported that wait times for medical treatment at VA facilities in the state were among the longest in the country.
The inspector general report noted the importance of group therapy and other treatments in helping those back from war deal with the demons of post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems.
“These therapies can promote significant improvement in symptoms and recovery for many veterans,” the report notes, highlighting the sad significance of the fact that investigators found staff in Colorado Springs took too long to set up care for PTSD treatment.
Thankfully, it does not appear any vets died waiting for mental- health treatment. While investigators dug into one case in which a patient committed suicide, they found insufficient evidence to link the death to the improper recordkeeping. Though the case involved a delay in treatment for PTSD, the patient was benefiting from mental-health treatment in Colorado Springs.
VA officials pushed back at the investigators’ findings, arguing that the intent was to better arrange group therapy sessions. And the VA’s Eastern Colorado Health Care System director, Sallie Houser-Hanfelder, told The Denver Post that staff stopped the unofficial recording keeping after the violation was flagged and were retrained to follow correct protocol in 60 days.
But a whistleblower in the case says the problem was widespread and that use of the unofficial records didn’t happen in error. “VA management knew that these wait lists were absolutely forbidden,” the whistleblower, Brian Smothers, told The Post. “But they directed the use of these wait lists anyway.”
Thankfully, lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., pressed for action.
“This cannot happen again and it’s time for the VA to finally wake up and ensure our men and women are getting the best care possible,” Gardner said in a statement.
As we’ve noted recently, a proposed law making its way through Congress would require the VA to bolster mental-health treatment of vets who receive less than honorable discharges. It’s a good plan based on good reasons, but it will depend on a system prepared to deal with it.
These signs that the current workload faces bottlenecks cry out for action. We hope the Trump administration finds a way. The members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman; Mac Tully, CEO and publisher; Chuck Plunkett, editor of the editorial pages; Megan Schrader, editorial writer; and Cohen Peart, opinion editor.