The many troubles with — and at — the Department of Veterans Affairs hit the St. Cloud VA Health Care System last month when a report surfaced about poor employee morale and high turnover of key staff there.

Please note the word “surfaced.” The report had essentially been buried. That’s important because it reflects a systemic problem that must be fixed by Congress: The VA’s system for investigating internal complaints needs serious changes.

Billed as a system in which the VA Inspector General’s Office is supposed to serve as a watchdog over the entire agency, the reality is the process allows the inspector general to push serious complaints off to regional VA authorities, who conduct investigations and handle them internally. Who knows what happens after that?

That point is crystal clear in the case of the report about the St. Cloud VA.

Complaints about St. Cloud being a hostile workplace, as well as other issues, came to the inspector general hotline and were ultimately investigated by regional officials. Their report, as noted in a Star Tribune report, was basically shelved.

Thanks only to whistle blowers and Minnesota First District U.S. Rep. Tim Walz did the report finally come to light. According to the Star Tribune, congressional committees responsible for monitoring the VA were never informed that it existed and the report was never made publicly available.

Such a scenario is exactly why a third party — one outside the VA — should be the primary investigating unit of complaints about internal operations at all VA facilities.

These developments are coming at a crucial time. Congress is examining the proposed VA Accountability Act, which emerged after reports about horrific, even deadly, wait times for veterans in need of care at a Phoenix VA hospital and other facilities.

The measure, which already passed the House, gives more power to the VA secretary to fire top management for poor performance or misconduct. It allows similar actions for front-line VA workers, which is why some labor unions are fighting it.

Those are important steps, but they also do not address what happened in St. Cloud’s case. Here, credible complaints were filed with the appropriate VA entities, but those entities had no obligation to report findings and actions to the public.

That needs to change. First, don’t let the VA investigate its own complaints. Second, make the findings public when they are complete.

 

— St. Cloud Times, Sept. 14