There is a strange system that works at the VA.
You have doctors that work directly for the Va.
You have many more doctors that work for the universities that many VA hospitals are staffed by mostly university medical schools. lots of interns in training and residents with professors running the show.

Then you have contract doctors. some involuntarily contracted because they have not or did not pay off there government loans for medical school.

Then you have doctors/nurse practitioners/physician assistants contracted to staff many of the rural clinics. Some other rural clinics are staffed by doctors/nurse practitioners/physician assistants that are VA employees.

You can rank a VA hospital staff by who works there.

The top medical doctors are the university professors, residents and interns in training.
The next down are the nurse practitioners/physician assistants employees of the VA at there rural clinics.
Next below that are the contract doctors nurse practitioners/physician assistants employed by the VA at both the hospitals and clinics.
And then there are the contract doctors at the rural clinics. Some are not to bad but there are a group that the VA has contracted from HMO hospitals there are just script writers and almost useless.

I enjoyed my heart bypass surgery in the VA hospital staffed by doctors from UCLA medical school.
Before morning round a half dozen interns would come by to check on my condition.
And then the resident would hold morning rounds with about a dozen interns.
and they missed nothing.
Plus these interns want to look good in front of the resident. So they had to be sharp.

Now the rest of the VA system(the non medical part)(and i don,t mean the hospital support staff.) are a pain in the A**.

Originally posted by jerico65
No surprises there. According to Obama, it will take years to fix the VA.

Yeah, he's really concerned about the homeless vets, but an ass hat in his administration is doing things like this.

At least Obama increased funding to the VA by 15%, the largest single increase in several decades. The republicans always underfund the VA. Bush was stingy as hell with supporting Veterans.

Thought I would give you guys and gals a little in site from my point of view. I graduated from high school in 1982. Two weeks later I was in the navy (family tradition thing being from the south). After 5 years I got a job at the VA. The things I saw were scary to say the least. Man strapped in chair, chair strapped to handrail on the wall. You would walk by and the vet would whisper “cut me loose”. It was beyond horrible. That was 1987. Have things changed? Yes, a lot and for the better. That's from the patient view (won't go into the long wait thing). Onto management. My second Director of the hospital after I started working there decided he liked women. Boy did he ever. To get to his office you had to walk through what we called Débutante Row. The Director after him? Had an entire wing of a floor re molded for his staff, including the perches of a 5k leather sofa. FYI, he now works in Boston overseeing the New England network. I could go on and on with this. But I think (hope) you get the point.

Earlier in this thread I made an angry post. I'm still angry the 24 million misapproriated dollars would be better spent directly to veterans healthcare and compensation.

Uncannily, today I received a letter from my veterans service representative that my 70% disability was reviewed and i was awarded 100% permanent and total disability.

You have no idea how ecstatic I am. This means a tremendous and significant change in my pay and way of life. They are paying me retroactively from last Nov. Wow!

Very strange coincidence. Just wanted to share. There is hope after all.