VA’s $900 Million Caregiver Program Bogged Down by Bad Data, IT Issues, GAO Finds
Military.com
By Patricia Kime
17 Sep 2019
The VA missed a progress deadline on building the needed system on Oct. 1, 2018, and the department will not be able to certify the system by Oct. 1, 2019, as required by Congress. This means that caregivers of veterans from the Vietnam War and earlier will not be able to apply as expected starting Oct. 1.
In this March 31, 2015, file photo, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center is shown in Portland, Oregon. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Inaccurate data kept by the Department of Veterans Affairs on its staff for the Family Caregiver Program and delays in the technology infrastructure needed to expand the program are hampering an effort to include the caregivers of injured veterans from World War II through Vietnam, a government watchdog agency has found.
The Government Accountability Office released a report Monday noting that the number of staff supporting the Family Caregiver Program at VA medical centers does not match the data kept by the program office -- an inaccuracy that prevents the VA from fully understanding the number of personnel that will be needed as the program grows.
The GAO also found that delays in implementing a new information technology system needed to support the program mean the expansion, mandated by Congress, is not expected for at least a year.
"The initial replacement for the Caregiver Application Tracker is not expected until late October 2019. Further, despite this initial deployment and additional releases expected through the summer of 2020, the department has not yet fully committed to a date by which it will certify that the new IT system fully supports the program," GAO analysts noted in the report.
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Nashua police struggle to deal with suicide of colleague
WMUR
Jennifer Crompton
News Reporter
Sep 12, 2019
Chief says he hopes sharing story will help others
NASHUA, N.H.
The Nashua police chief said Thursday his department is struggling to deal with the death of a fellow officer who died by suicide.
Capt. Jonathan Lehto's death was announced Monday, and the Nashua Police Department revealed Thursday that Lehto had taken his own life while visiting family in Seattle. Chief Michael Carignan said colleagues of the 20-year veteran were stunned by his death.
"He was so well respected," Carignan said. "He was an attorney. He got his law degree from Boston University, wanted to be a police officer. He had a stellar career as a detective and a supervisor, so we were struggling with trying to figure out why this happened."
With the family's blessing, Carignan said the department decided not to remain silent.
"The department really felt strongly that if we could be open and honest, that here was an amazing individual, by all accounts," Carignan said. "He took his life through suicide. It could happen to anybody."
Carignan said he grew up with Lehto and had him on his command staff, but he didn't see this coming.
"He was an exceptional attorney. He was an exceptional police officer. He was active on the SWAT team for a number of years," Carignan said. "He just, he was the epitome of what you want as a police officer."
He said suicide is a harsh reality among first responders, who stoically see and deal with so much.
"There's been that mentality of, 'Don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. You're fine. Suck it up,'" Carignan said.
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#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife
Ailing Navy veteran tells Bernie Sanders at Nevada town hall: "I'm gonna kill myself"
CBS NEWS
SEPTEMBER 15, 2019
In a dramatic moment caught on video, an ailing Navy veteran struggling to pay off his medical bills said he was contemplating suicide while speaking at a Bernie Sanders town hall in Carson City, Nevada. The veteran, named John, said Friday his Tricare was taken away, leaving him with more than $130,000 worth of medical bills.
"How are you going to pay it off?" Sanders asked the veteran.
"I can't, I can't. I'm gonna kill myself!" John responded.
In a video clip captured by CBS News' Cara Korte that has now gone viral, John told Sanders that he served 20 years in the Navy, including tours in Kuwait and Somalia.
"I saved lives. I was a Navy corpsman," he said. "We take care of our own except now. My Tricare is not acceptable anymore, they took it away."
The veteran said he suffers from Huntington's disease, a genetic disorder that causes the breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. According to the National Institutes of Health, there is no treatment for the disease.
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The VA’s suicide prevention strategy will fail
Military Times
By: Sean Gilfillan
September 17, 2019
Instead of relying on others, the VA’s strategy should be to replicate the peer, community and institutional support veterans had while they were in the military.
Hawaii-based service members from every branch of service, Department of Defense personnel, and military and DoD families form a human chain in the shape of a yellow suicide awareness ribbon on Sept. 5, 2018, in support of National Suicide Awareness Month at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Corwin Colbert/Navy)
The suicide rate for young adults was 17 per 100,000 population in 2017, while the suicide rate for veterans 18-39 is over 50 per 100,000.
The VA strategy says, “Suicide prevention is VA’s highest priority.” If that were true, the VA would not outsource the solution to local, community-based organizations. In the VA’s National Strategy for Preventing Veteran Suicide, there are four critical protective factors that help offset risk factors.
Two clinical solutions:
1) Positive coping skills, and
2) Access to mental health care; and two non-clinical solutions:
3) Feeling connected to other people, and
4) Having reasons for living or a sense of purpose in life.
The VA’s strategy has a “lead from behind” approach for the latter two. We give the VA $220.2 billion per year to take care of our 20 million veterans. Yet, the VA wants to outsource outreach to veteran service organizations (VSOs), nonprofits, local businesses and governments to address the two non-clinical factors. While VSOs advocate on behalf of all veterans, they are not in touch with all veterans.
Given member overlap and passive membership, basic math dictates that the combined marketing reach of the entire VSO community is estimated to be 5-10 percent of the total.
Even so, this business-to-business (B2B) (organization to organization) approach is not the right strategy for an organization with individual customers.
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VA secretary, congressman feud over office space inside Florida hospital
Stars and Stripes
By NIKKI WENTLING
Published: September 16, 2019
“It does something good for our veterans while not hurting anybody,” Mast said. “If you really want to understand a problem… you have to get your eyes on it and witness it yourself. I want to have an office in the VA so I can have my eyes on it, so my staff can have their eyes on what’s going right and wrong on a daily basis.”
VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, left, says Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., right, misled the public over Mast's eviction from his congressional office inside a VA hospital.
WASHINGTON – Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie accused a Florida congressman of misleading the public Friday after the lawmaker expressed outrage at being evicted from his congressional office inside a VA hospital.
The VA sent eviction notices to six members of Congress at the end of August, booting them and their staffs out of their offices inside VA hospitals in West Palm Beach and Orlando. Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., an Afghanistan War veteran and double amputee who in 2017 opened the first-ever congressional office inside a VA hospital, accused the agency of trying to avoid transparency and accountability.
On “Fox and Friends” last week, Mast referenced a tense exchange between he and Wilkie at a hearing in April, during which Mast pressed the secretary to visit the West Palm Beach VA hospital after a doctor there was shot by a patient.
Following the “Fox and Friends” interview, Wilkie wrote the congressman, alleging he made false implications about the VA’s decision to remove the lawmakers from their offices by the end of December.
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