Monitoring of VA Efficiency

VA botches appointment scheduling, report says 12/06/08. A new report says Veterans Centers run by the Department of Veterans Affairs could have seen more patients in the past year if they did a better job scheduling and rescheduling visits. About 4.9 million appointments were not kept in fiscal 2008, with each missed visit costing the VA about $182, according to the report by the VA inspector general, released Dec. 4. Navy Times

Review of Alleged Manipulation of Waiting Times, North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System 12/06/08. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) received a Congressional inquiry concerning the use of non count clinics at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System (NF/SG VHS). Veterans Health Administration (VHA) allows the use of non count clinics to account for minor workload and as a tracking tool to identify established patients who want to receive their care at a more convenient VHA facility. Accordingly, VHA set up non count clinics to ensure these patients, and their corresponding workload, were not counted twice when calculating a patient’s waiting time or reporting a facility’s waiting list. VAOIG