VA has huge backlog of applications for care

WASHINGTON - Despite promises of widespread reform, nearly 900,000 military veterans have pending applications to access health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the department's inspector general said this week.

The disclosure came in a scathing report that recommended a total overhaul of the agency's record-keeping system that could take years.

A third of those veterans are thought to be dead, but problems with the data make it tough to know how many former troops were still struggling to get care, the report says. The VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants.

More than half of the applications listed as "pending" as of last year do not even say when the applications were dated, and the Associated Press reported Wednesday that investigators "could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment" in VA health care.

"Data limitations" prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health-care benefits or when.

Linda Halliday, the VA's acting inspector general, told the AP that the agency's Health Eligibility Center "has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data."

The report also says VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed. They may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic "transactions" over the last five years.

Whistle-blowers have been warning that more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased. The inspector general's report substantiated those claims.

Scott Davis, a whistle-blower and program specialist at the VA enrollment center in Atlanta, called the report "a step in the right direction" and said: "Reports like these will force the VA to change their culture."

He said he was "cautiously optimistic," but added that VA leaders responsible for problems must be held accountable.

"The VA's past practice of deferring to the same management officials who caused the problem . . . is both illogical and insulting to the veteran community."