The VA Secretary’s Visit May Have Spurred Improvements, But Wait Times At Dorn VA Medical Center Still Drag

On July 9th, Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson visited the Dorn VA Medical Center in Columbia, SC, and commended the VA Hospital’s improvements to wait times and care delays.

However, the Dorn VA Medical Center remains the fourth worst offender in the nation for delays in veterans’ medical care. While the veterans hospital has not created secret waiting lists, like the Phoenix VA was accused of, the hospital still suffers long wait times that, particularly in an investigation from 2012 and 2013, led to the development of serious cancers as well as veterans’ deaths.

Beginning two months ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs began publically releasing data on wait times at various veterans hospitals across the country. The wait times at Dorn VA Medical Center decreased for new primary care patients (from 71.76 days on May 15 to 53.57 on July 1), for new specialty care patients (from 65.95 to 63.09 days) and for new mental health patients (from 45.01 to 31.79 days).

Dorn added staff and extended clinic hours to get 1,700 more veterans in for medical care and treatment at the VA Hospital, a move that Secretary Gibson praised. This allowed wait times to drop from an average of 77 days to 53 days.

The VA Medical Center also added more space to their campus, another move that Gibson both praised and criticized. “That’s still not enough. Space is still a problem here,” he said.

Gibson added that, although Dorn’s move was admirable, more work was needed to get veterans the medical treatment they need in a timely fashion. An audit of wait times from June showed that 900 veterans spent 90 days waiting for treatment at Dorn VA Medical Center.

A survey by the Washington Free Beacon showed that Dorn still ranks 4th worst in the country for veterans’ wait times. The VA medical center has 27 “institutional disclosures of adverse events,” which ranked the veterans hospital just behind Gainesville, FL (42 adverse events), Greater Los Angeles (38 adverse events), and Pittsburg (29 adverse events). The Augusta and Charleston VA Medical Centers fared much better, but were still in trouble, with Augusta ranking 10th. Charleston had 100 patients waiting 90 days or more for treatment.

While most of the 27 “adverse events” listed were from an investigation in 2012 and 2013, at least 4 of the incidents were recent.

An investigation into veterans healthcare delays at Dorn VA Medical Center from 2012 and 2013 showed that at least 52 cancer cases and 6 deaths could have been prevented if the wait times had been better.

“We are working to correct problems identified in the past by moving to address those issues, for it is important to restore the trust of our South Carolina veterans,” Dorn spokesman Kevin McIver said.

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