Manchester VA scores 4 out of 5

Dec. 26--The Manchester VA Medical Center isn't a full-blown hospital, but it got better than a passing grade in the latest ranking of the 146 health centers for veterans across the country.

For the second straight year, Manchester was given a "4" ranking out of a possible "5" in a report from the Department of Veterans Affairs on quality of care.

There were 17 centers in the country that got a top score, including three in Massachusetts: the VA hospital in Boston; the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial VA in Bedford, Mass.; and the Central-Western Massachusetts VA in Leeds, Mass.

Pennsylvania was the state with the most centers -- four -- that got the best score.

These were the scores for other New England states:

--Vermont: White River Junction VA, 3

--Maine: Togus VA in Augusta, 2

--Rhode Island: Providence VA, 4

--Connecticut: West Haven VA, 4

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald had fought against the release of the information, saying that the ratings could cause "unwarranted distress" to veterans and discourage them from getting treatment.

The report's release followed a USA Today story last month that revealed the scores for all the VA hospitals.

U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, D-NH, said she was pleased to see the results issued.

"As the lead Democrat on the U.S. House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, I've pushed for greater transparency at the Department of Veterans Affairs and this step is an important move by the VA," Kuster said.

The VA announced in an internal memo last week that it was now posting updated ratings on its website, including indicators of whether hospitals were improving.

Key Manchester findings

The quality of care data measures the average wait times for patients to receive medical care, a surgical procedure or a mental health care visit, along with the time it takes to finish the most common VA cases such as pneumonia, hypertension and diabetes control.

Here are some of the key findings with regards to the Manchester VA for the year ending on Dec. 1, 2016.

--Total Cases: 22,216

--Scheduled Within 30 days: 21,387

--Percentage within 30 days: 96.3 percent.

--Cases beyond 120 days: 20

--Percentage after 4 months: .09 percent.

--Average Wait Time Patient Care: 3.4 days

--Average Wait Time Surgical Care: 4.2 days

--Average Wait Time Mental Health: 5.7 days

Though the number of cases in satellite clinics is much smaller, the wait times are longer in some of those sites. For example, it took an average of 22 days to get a scheduled surgery at the Portsmouth clinic and nearly 20 days in Somersworth, the report found.

Kuster said she hosted field hearings on wait times. Some were much longer in other VA hospitals across the country, with tragic results for veterans in Phoenix, Ariz., for example.

"For a department that has been rocked by scandal and mismanagement, increasing access to information about how veterans are receiving care is critical," Kuster said.

"The men and women who have served our nation in uniform deserve nothing less than the best, and we must use this data to improve health care for veterans in New Hampshire and across the country."

Call for investigation

In September, Kuster called on federal prosecutors to probe whether VA construction chief Glenn Haggstrom and other VA officials had lied under oath to the House panel about a VA facility in Aurora, CO.

"The reports of mismanagement and severe cost overruns at the VA facility in Colorado are incredibly serious and must be thoroughly investigated," Kuster wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

"If VA officials misrepresented the situation in Colorado to Congress or attempted to mislead the Veterans Affairs Committee, they must be held responsible."

The FBI recently confirmed it was looking into such an investigation.

Federal law requires the VA to provide data on wait times, death and readmission rates, and surveys of patient experiences at veterans' hospitals to Hospital Compare, a website run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But the VA stopped sending that data on July 1.

"VA's lack of transparency is infuriating, but it's not at all surprising, as this isn't the first time VA has chosen to ignore a law designed to improve VA's performance and help veterans and taxpayers," Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, said at the time.

"But the key question in all of this is, what is the VA trying to hide by refusing to make this info public?"

For years, the VA has secretly assigned star ratings for each of its medical centers based on measures of their quality of care, but it had refused to release the ratings, saying they are not meant for public consumption.

The internal ratings are based on dozens of factors, including death and infection rates, instances of avoidable complications and wait times, much of which comes out of the VA's Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning, or SAIL, database. To this day, the precise formula for setting star ratings is unknown.

klandrigan@unionleader.com

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