Veterans voice frustrations with VA Medical Center

Veterans fired verbal volleys at officials who run the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas during a town hall meeting Thursday.

The meeting was heated at times when several of the 200 audience members in the packed auditorium vented frustrations over long waits for health care and other issues with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Some demanded answers about why referrals to other medical providers are delayed, why the pharmacy is slow to deliver drug refills and why the phone system doesn’t work as it should.

VA officials seated on a panel at the front of the auditorium tried to hold their ground against the tide of criticism, offering assurances that staff members are working hard to fix the problems.

“It does take a long time, that’s why we’re here,” said Philip Matkovsky, assistant deputy under secretary for health for administrative operations for the Veterans Health Administration in Washington, D.C.

“We need to get faster. Across the country, it takes too long. …I don’t have the answers today,” he said.

One Vietnam War Army veteran, Carson Earnest, wanted to know why video surveillance recordings were “lost” and no one was held accountable in the much-publicized Oct. 22, 2013 ordeal of blind Navy veteran Sandi Niccum. She spent four hours and 45 minutes in the center’s emergency waiting room, slumped and suffering from abdominal pain.

“Who is responsible for Sandi Niccum?” asked Earnest, a retired Chicago police lieutenant. “It was on the video but you lost the video.”

Niccum, 78, died Nov. 15 at a local hospice after a bout with a colon disorder. A probe by the VA Office of Inspector General, however, found no relationship between the length of Niccum’s wait and her subsequent death.

As Matkovsky was leaving to travel to a town hall meeting in Colorado, he told the Review-Journal he would look into the video surveillance questions and provide the make and model of the recording system. VA officials have said the system automatically erased the recording as it had been programmed to do so after a certain amount of time.

Navy veteran Robert Strain, 68, who served three combat tours in Vietnam, said, “I have called in to try to get pharmacy refills. It was almost an impossibility.”

And John Scaduto, 70, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 1076, noted the medical center that cost $1 billion to build and staff has been open two years, but problems with its operation persist. “Is it going to take two years to fix the problems?” he asked.

VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System Director Isabel Duff said the local veterans caseload is “going through incredible growth” and Nevada, not just the VA, has a shortage of doctors. She also said the agency is trying to iron out problems with a new phone system by expanding hours and adding six staff members to bring to 20 the number of employees to handle calls.

Said her associate director, Bill Caron: “This is a marathon, not a sprint. But I assure you we will get there.”

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.