WASHINGTON (AP) — About 65 percent of senior executives
at the Veterans Affairs Department got performance bonuses last year
despite widespread treatment delays and preventable deaths at VA
hospitals and clinics, the agency said Friday.
More than 300 VA
executives were paid a total of $2.7 million in bonuses last year, said
Gina Farrisee, assistant VA secretary for human resources and
administration. That amount is down from about $3.4 million in bonuses
paid in 2012, Farrisee said.
The totals do not include tens of
millions of dollars in bonuses awarded to doctors, dentists and other
medical providers throughout the VA’s nearly 900 hospitals and clinics.
Workers
at the Phoenix VA Health Care System — where officials have confirmed
dozens of patients died while awaiting treatment — received about $3.9
million in bonuses last year, newly released records show. The
merit-based bonuses were doled out to about 650 employees, including
doctors, nurses, administrators, secretaries and cleaning staff.
There
was confusion Friday about the number of senior executives who received
bonuses. During a hearing Friday of the House Veterans’ Affairs
Committee, both lawmakers and Farrisee had indicated that nearly 80
percent of senior executives had received bonuses. Later, however, the
committee provided documents showing that 304 of 470 senior executives,
or 64.7 percent, had received bonuses. The committee and a VA spokesman
said the 80 percent figure referred to the number of senior executives
who received very high ratings, not those who received bonuses.
Farrisee
defended the bonus system, telling the Veterans’ Affairs panel that the
VA needs to pay bonuses to keep executives who are paid up to $181,000
per year.
"We are competing in tough labor markets for skilled
personnel," Farrisee said. "To remain competitive in recruiting and
retaining the best personnel to serve our veterans, we must rely on
tools such as incentives and awards that recognize superior
performance."
Farrisee’s testimony drew sharp rebukes by lawmakers from both parties.
Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the committee chairman, said the VA’s bonus system "is failing
veterans."
Instead
of being given for outstanding work, the cash awards are "seen as an
entitlement and have become irrelevant to quality work product," Miller
said.
Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., said awarding bonuses to a high
percentage of executives means that the VA was setting the bar for
performance so low that "anybody could step over it. If your metrics are
low enough that almost everybody exceeds them, then your metrics are
not very high."
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, D-N.H., said the VA
suffered from "grade inflation, or what (humorist) Garrison Keillor
would refer to as ‘all of the children are above average.’"
Kuster
and other lawmakers said they found it hard to believe that so many
senior employees could be viewed as exceeding expectations, given the
growing uproar over patients dying while awaiting VA treatment and
mounting evidence that workers falsified or omitted appointment
schedules to mask frequent, long delays. The resulting election-year
firestorm forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign three weeks ago.
Miller,
the Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, noted that in the past four
years, none of the VA’s 470 senior executives have received ratings of
minimally satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the two lowest ratings on the
VA’s five-tier evaluation system. Nearly 80 percent of senior executives
were rated as outstanding or exceeding "fully successful," according to
the VA.
"Based on this committee’s investigations, outside
independent reports and what we have learned in the last few months, I
wholeheartedly disagree with VA’s assessment of its senior staff,"
Miller said.
An updated audit released this week showed that about
10 percent of veterans seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics
have to wait at least 30 days for an appointment. More than 56,000
veterans have had to wait at least three months for initial
appointments, the report said, and an additional 46,000 veterans who
asked for appointments over the past decade never got them.
The VA
has confirmed that dozens of veterans died while awaiting appointments
at VA facilities in the Phoenix area, although officials say they can’t
tell whether the delays caused any of the deaths.
The VA’s
inspector general has said that the bonus system — which has been
suspended amid a criminal probe of wrongdoing at the agency —
contributed to the fake record-keeping, since employees knew that
bonuses for senior managers and hospital directors were based in part on
on-time performance.
Some 13 percent of VA schedulers surveyed by
auditors reported being told by supervisors to falsify appointment
records to make patient waits appear shorter.
The House and Senate
have both approved legislation to make it easier to fire senior
executives and hospital administrators. The House bill would ban
performance bonuses, while the Senate would sharply limit them.
Lawmakers say they hope to bring a compromise bill to the president
before the July 4 recess.
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Matthew Daly can be reached at: https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC