Depatment of Veterans Affairs Essay Example for Free

Depatment of Veterans Affairs Essay The Department of Veterans Affairs is continuing to have many problems with many of the services that they offer. The service that has been impacted the most is the healthcare division, others such as vocational rehabilitation and the Post 9/11 GI Bill are not providing the proper outlets and support that the veterans are in need of. In recent months the VA has had many accountability problems with regard to patients even dying from lack of services. When these problems first came to light the Federal government investigated some of the problems and there was no accountability for the people that were not doing their jobs. There were also bonuses being given out when people were not doing their jobs. There have been many policy’s put in place such as Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014. This should help many of the problems that the VA is having in the healthcare division alone. The largest problem that they are currently having is a large backlog of patients just awaiting to be seen, as well as being understaffed for the amount of staff needed for the large amount of veterans now being seen. Recently the secretary of the VA, Eric Shinseki, resigned from his position and the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Sloan Gibson took his position for a short period until a new secretary could be chosen. The new Secretary of Veterans Affairs is Robert McDonald. He has proposed many different ways to help get veterans the benefits that they have been waiting for. The backlog is still over 750,000 veterans with almost one third of them still being from the backlog. Some of the more recent problems have been that the Department of Veterans Affairs has caught employees discarding, through burning and shredding, the files of some of the veterans that have applied for benefits. There are other plans being put into place, one by the President, and this is the Veterans Choice Card. This new program will allow veterans to visit other hospitals and doctors outside of the VA for treatment. The Veterans Affairs hospitals can only grow so much until they need help from outside sources to h elp take care of everyone that needs medical attention. There has been an Industry Day as the Veterans Affairs office has been calling it which is going to be for determining the costs for healthcare outside of the VA. The topics that will be covered in this are:Â  Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014 Backlog