Editor’s note: This article is by Rick Jurgens, of the Valley News, in which it was first published July 11, 2016.
[W]HITE RIVER JUNCTION — Alfred Montoya, the new director of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is not just an executive in a division that provides care for about 25,000 veterans in northern New England.
He’s also a patient.
“I do get my medical care at (the) VA,” said Montoya, who introduced himself to employees and veterans’ representatives and answered a few questions during a 40-minute town hall meeting on Monday. “I believe in the system.”
Montoya, who served in the U.S. Air Force for more than a decade, became permanent director of the VA’s White River Junction division in June after a seven-month stint as interim chief.
Montoya said he took over “a very high performance medical center that had an opportunity for improving in the area of communication.”
Besides town hall meetings, which will occur each quarter, efforts to improve communication with employees will include an online ask-the-director message link, walks around the hospital at least three times a week, monthly notes from the director and occasional gatherings with about a dozen employees, Montoya said.
“Where we can improve, we certainly will,” he said.
Michael Currier, a liaison officer with Vermont Veterans Outreach, a service program backed by the Vermont National Guard, suggested one area for improvement: the use of the postcards that the local VA had begun mailing out to remind veterans of appointments.
“Sometimes, we get the ‘you missed an appointment’ card before we get the appointment card,” Currier said. Montoya promised to look into it.
Appointments and scheduling have been sore points in the VA. A whistleblower’s 2014 revelations that a VA facility in Phoenix was hiding long wait times by vets sparked a nationwide controversy. In January, Deborah Amdur, Montoya’s predecessor as local VA director, was tapped to head up the much larger and still troubled facility in Phoenix.
Montoya cited VA data that showed that during May at White River Junction and six satellite facilities in New Hampshire and Vermont, veterans faced an average wait of 1.2 days for psychiatric care, 3.4 days for specialty care and 4.4 days for primary care appointments. That compared favorably with nationwide average waits of 2.5, 6.2 and 4.6 days respectively.
Last week a bipartisan commission created in the wake of the scheduling and delay controversy reported that “care delivered by VA is in many ways comparable or better in clinical quality to that generally available in the private sector.” However, the report added, that care “can be substantially compromised by problems with access, service, and poorly functioning operational systems and processes.” That left a system where “many profound deficiencies in VHA operations require urgent reform.”
During a meeting with reporters in his office, Montoya declined to comment on the commission report but said that operations at White River Junction would be improved through the implementation of a business protocol called Lean Six Sigma, which purports to help companies and institutions reduce errors. Lean Six Sigma is being implemented nationwide by the VA, Montoya said.
More concrete improvements are also in the works at White River Junction. Design work will begin soon on a $9 million ward renovation that would convert existing inpatient “gang” rooms, with three or four patients, into private rooms or rooms shared by two patients, said Matthew Mulcahy, the local facility’s associate director.
