VA Admits: Sick People Need Clinicians, Not More Managers

The new VA secretary, Robert A. McDonald, speaking to a room-full of reporters, acknowledged for the first time that “the department needed to hire “tens of thousands of new doctors, new nurses, new clinicians”“. It is now accepted that a shortage of employees directly involved in treating patients was a main driver in the waiting-list scandal that rocked the agency this year.  The second, and equally important driver, was the artificially created benchmarks, that managers tried to satisfy in order to reap financial rewards, despite the lack of adequate clinical caregivers.

Those of us involved in real patient care already know that the doctor, nurse, pharmacist, therapist, and others directly involved in caring for patients are the cornerstone of a well-functioning healthcare system. Unfortunately, neither the VA nor the civilian healthcare systems fulfil this important criteria. Instead, most healthcare dollars are spent supporting salaries of administrators, managers, insurance company executives, bureaucrats and politicians, middlemen, who have somehow become the “bosses” of the “industry“ .

It took Mr. McDonald, a leader from the private retail industry, to explain to the VA that you cannot care for sick people using managers and administrators. In July, the VA had more than 9,000 registered nurse vacancies and almost 4,000 physician vacancies – good luck finding all these highly-trained professionals...