The V.A. Red Tape Follies

The latest Veteran’s Administration Red Tape Follies!

The VA has this “new” Appointment policy that they instated I guess a year or two ago, where-in regularly scheduled appointments of once or twice a year are No Longer tracked by the VA. Instead, the bureaucratic idea is that the veteran is supposed to remember and call in to make an appointment when the time rolls around. Because, I guess, the veteran is more concerned with his health than the Veterans Administration could ever be.

Now in the past, when a vet had his regularly scheduled appointment, AT THAT TIME, the VA scheduled the next appointment for 6 months or a year down the road, stored that information in their computers, and when the time rolled around, automatically spat out a mailer to remind you of your appointment. It is the thing that ALL computers are very good at doing.

Well, this must have worked too well for the bureaucratic red tapers. Some fool, high up in the “command” level of the VA decided that it would work SO MUCH BETTER if the VA just opted out of the whole keeping track of appointments, and such bureaucratic nonsense that their massive computer system was designed to do. Perhaps it slowed down their computer poker games or something.

The new, vastly improved method, as I’ve said, was for the individual veteran to keep track of his own appointments, and when the time rolled around for the need for another appointment, the veteran was to call up and make an appointment.

Their (somewhat muddled) thinking was, that it would be more timely to make the appointments on the fly, as they come up, than to have it set in stone from last year, so to speak. The appointments (went their thinking) would be easier to make and get the vet in to see the doctor because the appointment had just been scheduled, and not in their computer for a year or whatever. Quicker!

Their plan was, that unlike the “scheduled a year ago” appointments, this method would leave holes in the doctor’s appointment schedule to more timely slot the vet in to see the doctor. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I am not a Red Tape Theoretician. I had discussed this bizarre new scheduling plan with my doctor, and discussed it the last time I had an appointment with my Pharmacist, also. They both explained how it was supposed to work to me. I don’t think they varied a single word in their explanation of it to me. It was like they were parroting a memorized script, or something. I doubt that they believed the “efficiency” of the “plan” themselves, but what can they do? They are just cogs in the bureaucracy.

So, anyway, just recently I noticed that all my prescriptions were running out, so I needed to see my doctor for new refills. I spent a very frustrating hour on the phone battling with the “Automated Phone System from Bureaucratic Hell,” achieving nothing but an elevation in my blood pressure. Absolutely NOTHING accomplished.

This Monday, the 1st of November 2010, I tried again, using a different tact. I called up, miraculously reaching an actual human being, and asked for an appointment with my primary care physician in the Ocotillo Clinic.

The appointment giver hemmed and hawwed, gazed at the appointment schedule for my doctor (the one that was designed to give timely appointments), and mumbled that it was all full up. He would have to schedule me with an “overbook,” and hope that the doctor could squeeze me in. He finally decided that he could make an appointment on 20 January, with no promises that I would actually be seen! That is over TWO and a half months in advance for a MAYBE! (Incidentally, that was EXACTLY what this new system was designed to avoid, and that the old system NEVER HAD) Progress HO!

Yes, sir, that new “plan” for appointments sure is an improvement over the older system that would have already gotten me in and sent me home with my NEXT appointment for next year.

America sure does love its veterans. Or at least, the VA does!