Jerry Moran Asks VA Secretary Doug Collins: Do You Want Trump To Nominate A New Inspector General?

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During a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing last week, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) questioned VA Secretary Doug Collins about the department’s vacant inspector general role.

Transcript

00:00yield back. Mr. Secretary, thank you. So what, in your time as the Secretary and the circumstances

00:09that you are under and engaged in, what do you assess as your most significant areas of concern

00:16for the VA and what do you believe is working? Is there anything that you've learned that needs to

00:22be done differently? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think one of the most interesting things for me

00:26in the first 100 days is constantly fighting rumor and innuendo, much of which I'm sure we will hear

00:31today that I'm going to try and put to rest. But one of the things is, is I had to take it from a

00:36perspective of us being on the GAO list and looking at the past history, as I expressed to many of you

00:40during confirmation, is what is working right and what is not working right. And as we looked at this,

00:45what I found was a system bureaucracy that was broken. Here's an interesting stat for most of it

00:50you may not know. I came into the office and it took me a week and a half before our human resources

00:55department could actually produce a list of all the employees that we have. A week and a half

01:01because our systems were so broken and bureaucratically challenged. You know, we didn't

01:07address any of the, what I found out was we didn't address any of the major concerns. Wait times,

01:11which I just outlined in my opening statement, have gotten worse. Backlog got worse. All while we

01:17were adding people and all while we were adding money. You know, the inefficiencies are interesting.

01:21I'll just show you one example. Under the previous administration, they were trying to consolidate

01:26payroll and payroll across the board. We asked for a number from payroll. We got 230,000 is our

01:33employee base. It's who we're paying. Well, we know, obviously we had almost 470,000. The reason was,

01:39is we had 50 to 60 of our hospitals still doing their own payroll instead of it all being centralized

01:44where it could be done in an efficient manner and make sure that we all have it where we need to go.

01:48The HR system was in disarray. Suicide, our death by suicide number has not changed since 2008,

01:55yet we're spending $588 million a year to look at that and 2.3 billion in counseling and care.

02:03These are just the things that we have seen so far and we've actually implemented to go forward and

02:08look at the things that we got to fix and move forward on those. But to simply say that where we

02:13came in was okay and needed tweaks was just simply not true. And veterans in this room and other

02:17places know that. Mr. Secretary, you mentioned in your opening statement, Inspector Generals. I've

02:23indicated, I think, in many conversations and certainly hearings in which VA staff are witnesses

02:30that the return of an Inspector General is a high priority for me. What's the plan?

02:36We're in favor of that as well and making sure that the White House and we've encouraged

02:40the Inspector General to be named and look forward to that being in place. I mean, again,

02:44we're looking at it as a metric of how we can get better. For the last 10 years, that has been

02:48the metric saying that we're at a high risk. So from our perspective, we welcome the

02:52oversight to make sure that we're eating the metrics that we need to do to take care of

02:55veterans.

02:55And so, Mr. Secretary, your impression that you leave is that the White House, the

03:01President needs to nominate someone. Is that where we are?

03:03That is the next step in that, yes.

03:04Okay. I want to ask a specific question. Community care. I appreciate your attention to the Mission

03:18Act. We've been trying this committee that we believe is particularly important for veterans

03:25at risk for suicide and mental health issues. Veterans who are potentially victims of overdose,

03:34deaths. I wrote to the VA in January urging mental health residential rehabilitation treatment

03:40programs to be included under existing community care access standards to immediately expand

03:47access to those life-saving services to veterans across the country in the community. Can you provide

03:53me with an update on your progress to add mental health residential rehabilitation treatment

03:57programs to the Mission Act access standards?

03:59Yes, and I think that is going through right now and adding those as we go forward, making

04:04sure that the VA and the veteran is going through programs that are suitable for the program

04:09it needs to be and also taking care of the needs of the veterans. So that is moving forward.

04:13We agree with you that any opportunity that we can take to give more service to the veterans,

04:18especially in the mental health area. Also, Mr. Chairman, there's something else to think

04:22about here as well. One of the things that I didn't mention earlier is there seems to be at times

04:28a difference in how we deal with the VA as opposed to how we deal with health care in general. And some of

04:33that's got, frankly, needs to change in the sense that the VA is the largest health care provider, but also we

04:39shall we share the same challenges as the community does as well with doctor recruitment, nurses shortage,

04:45doctor shortages, help mental health workers in those. So we're working those in our areas to make sure that we do have good

04:51community health, community partners in this regard, and also hiring the best that we can also leveraging

04:57partnerships with DOJ with DOD, but also looking at our nonprofits and our VSO to see how they can help

05:03as well. So it's a total approach to how we're looking at this and want to continue to do.

05:07Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

05:11You know, I listened to you recite

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