An audit released today shows long wait times at Veterans medical facilities nationwide and 13 percent of schedulers sampled in the audit said they’d been instructed to falsify data to meet performance goals.
More than 57,000 veterans have had to wait longer than 90 days for medical appointments.
And you can go to this link to see how individual facilities performed.
In the region that includes Arkansas, nine facilities were flagged for further review, including a clinic in Hot Springs. The VA operates hospitals in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Fayetteville and more than a dozen clinics in cities around the state.
This document includes a table with average wait times at VA facilities in the region. It shows, for example, 59- and 52-day wait times for new patients to see a primary care doctor in Little Rock and Fayetteville, respectively. The wait for established patients was 4.2 and 2.5 days, respectively. Wait times for new specialty care patients was 41 and 43 days. For established patients it was 3.5 and 2.4 days.
The report said 97 percent of appointments in Little Rock and 96 percent in Fayetteville were scheduled within 30 days.