In Six Months, Slow Progress For Tennessee Veterans Waiting To See Doctors

About 100 people attended the Nashville town hall meeting at the Veterans Affairs hospital in September. Many shared their personal experiences about long wait times. Credit: Emily Siner / WPLN

Are you a veteran who has seen a VA doctor in Middle Tennessee? Tell us about your experiences in the comments section below.

A substantial number of veterans in this region are waiting more than a month to see doctors, even though the federal Veterans Affairs department and the regional healthcare system has spent more than $17 million since May to send patients to private care.

Earlier this year, during investigations into long wait times, the Veterans Health Administration set a goal: to see patients within 30 days of when they wanted an appointment.

The Tennessee Valley Healthcare System missed that goal about 10 percent of the time, so it started paying for thousands of veterans who weren’t being seen quickly enough to go to private doctors instead.

That was six months ago, but the percent of appointments with wait times of 30 days or longer still hasn’t decreased. In fact, it’s increased about half a percentage point: 13,179 appointments were scheduled a month or more away as of Nov. 5.

Sloan Gibson, the VA’s deputy secretary, met with reporters this week and defended the regional VA, saying the number of patients waiting 90 days or more has dropped significantly.

“The area that I’m really immediately focused on is what I call the tail,” he said. “It’s the 90th percentile or the 95th percentile. It’s the veterans that are waiting the longest for care.”

But Gibson did acknowledge wait times are a problem here. He said the VA is building additions at the hospitals in Nashville and Murfreesboro, and it’s hiring more employees to get veterans to doctors faster.

He also pointed out that the Veterans Health Administration has recently changed its benchmark for tracking progress. Now the priority is no longer to see patients within 30 days of when they request an appointment, but rather within 30 days of when doctors deem it “clinically appropriate” for an appointment. Under that new definition, only 6.5 percent of appointments in the region don’t meet the goal.