The executive director of the Atlanta VA Hospital is retiring this week after multiple journalistic investigations uncovered that veterans were being mistreated in one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the United States (stories HERE and HERE).
First, the turnover at the top was a retirement. There will be no accountability for the bad care veterans have received. That’s wrong and it flies in the face of the goals of multiple presidential administrations of holding bad high ranking VA Administrators accountable.
And make no mistake, that’s where a lot of the problems with the VA health care system have stemmed from for years. It’s not that primary care provider, nurse, or staffer behind the desk that is responsible for bad care. That’s just one area. It’s the administrator at the top who allows these problems to pile higher and higher instead of taking action to ensure we’re getting the care we deserve.
They’re worried about public relations, not the medical care of veterans.
But, we are turning a page and I hope that our brothers and sisters in Atlanta will begin to see better care.
We have to keep in mind, not all veterans have a blog. Not all of them understand how to use their elected officials to hold bad administrators accountable. Some of them don’t even have family members to advocate for them.
They’ll end up quitting and walking away quietly. No one will go looking for them. Veterans have died this way before.
I pray for a new day at the Atlanta VA. These men and women deserve good care. I hope they get it.
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