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Capitol View®
Brett Neely

Delegation demands meeting with VA Secretary

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WASHINGTON - Minnesota's 10 member congressional delegation wants a meeting with Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald about the status of an internal investigation on whether the Minneapolis VA falsified records about veterans wait times, part of a pattern of behavior congressional investigators have found at other VA health systems around the country.

“We are deeply troubled by serious allegations of falsified records and manipulation of scheduling data at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System,” said the members in their letter to McDonald.

When news first broke about a similar pattern of behavior at the Phoenix VA, Minnesota members of Congress believed there were no such incidents at the Minneapolis VA Hospital, the state's largest facility for veterans. Then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned over the incidents and Congress quickly passed legislation boosting funding for VA care and allowing veterans to seek medical care from private providers if wait times at their local VA were too long.

The revelations about the Minneapolis VA were first reported by KARE which found that VA supervisors pressured employees to falsify medical records in order to make the center's wait time statistics look better than they were. A former Marine died in 2012 from seizures while waiting for an appointment with a VA specialist.