Paralyzed Veterans of America issued the following:
Paralyzed Veterans of America Responds to VA Secretary McDonald's Meet the Press Debut
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Image courtesy of NBC News
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Paralyzed Veterans of America
released the following statement from Deputy Executive Director Sherman
Gillums, Jr. in response to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary
Robert McDonald’s interview on the February 15, 2015, edition of Meet
the Press.
“Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald told Meet
the Press host Chuck Todd that he believes he can run the VA like a
business. Given McDonald's experience as the former CEO of Proctor and
Gamble, he undoubtedly knows how to run a business. The question is
whether a government agency with high costs and an extremely complex
social mission can cure itself of the moral hazard and institutional
inefficiencies that would've run any other business into extinction a
long time ago. The answer: it had better.
Businesses rise and fall on their bottom line. For VA, that bottom
line is not how much money it makes, although fiscal efficiency is a
solid measure of performance. The value proposition that will sustain VA
is the manner in which it delivers quality healthcare and administers
full benefits
in a timely manner. In the past, perceptions of whether VA was
achieving that value were based on how well employees and managers saw
their own performance and stuck to the rules. Now it's about how well VA
pleases its number one customers — the veterans who give VA its reason
for being.
Increasingly, veterans and their advocates are being asked to make a
choice between VA and the private sector in terms of healthcare. To VA's
credit, the incentive is increasingly less about bonuses or promotions
that fly in the face of the Peter Principle. Now it's job security.
According to McDonald, 900+ VA employees no longer enjoy the security
that government employment offers. But provoking real change may take
firing 9,000 employees, particularly the hardliners who believe "this
too shall pass" in response to calls for sweeping changes and greater
accountability in VA.
Fortunately, Secretary McDonald appears willing to engage
stakeholders and stare reality in its unforgiving face, which may
explain the reason he's been able to make incremental changes. Following
the implementation of his MyVA initiative, McDonald's VA has reduced
the VA claims backlog, tackled veteran homelessness
in the hardest hit areas like Los Angeles, and improved access to
healthcare for veterans who once languished on waiting lists. More
importantly, he sees his challenge as a business proposition and agrees
with Paralyzed Veterans of America that VA must compete on its merits to
win back the trust of the public.
President Herbert Hoover said, "Competition is not only the basis of
protection to the consumer but is the incentive to progress." Progress
in VA will hinge on whether the system and those who run it finally see
the extraordinary task of taking care of veterans as an endeavor where
exceeding customer expectations is the metric that matters above all
else.”
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