Martha Roby: “It has been almost a year since the director of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System was fired after numerous…”

“It has been almost a year since the director of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System was fired after numerous reports of mismanagement and malfeasance surfaced--the missing patient x rays, the falsified records, the employee who took a veteran to a crackhouse, and the utter lack of discipline and order. The removal was possible under new authority granted under the VA reform law that we passed last year, and I was hopeful that this action was indicative of a new VA leadership that finally got it, that was willing to cut through the bureaucracy and make the decisions necessary to turn around failing medical centers. I did hear a lot of nice promises--commitments to work through the system to make sure that the problems were fixed--but, Mr. Speaker, the problems were not fixed. Communication and coordination between various levels of management are still badly out of sync at a time when we can least afford it. It seems like, every time I think we are in a position to make real progress in central Alabama, something falls through the cracks, the ball gets dropped, an opportunity is missed. Every time, the VA leadership can point to the various layers of bureaucracy for why these problems exist--promises, excuses--but not action. Mr. Speaker, I believe the problem is that we have been depending on a broken bureaucracy to fix itself.…”