Misplaced mail investigated at Veterans Administration Hospital

The photos of boxes piled up high with letters and parcels ready to be delivered may be misleading to some because they are not from one of our  local post offices. They are instead from the basement of the Atlanta Veterans Administration where mail, destined for veterans, has sat for months, with some mail showing postmarks dating back to 2020.

Two VA workers at the Decatur hospital discovered ten pallets of months-old mail sitting unopened in the warehouse basement and reported it to higher ups at the Atlanta Veterans Administration. News of this mishap made its way to local media. 

All mail is important to the recipient, but what is disturbing in this case is that many of the mail pieces that have sat for months reportedly contained medical records for many veterans who may have been waiting for documents to schedule surgery, receive other health related treatment, or pay private doctors for services to veterans. 

The agency is responsible for care of more than 100,000 military veterans in north Georgia. Much of the mail was addressed to a department that handles veterans’ medical records and payments to doctors who treat veterans outside of the VA system. The Atlanta VA admitted this week that the mail contained about $200,000 in checks. 

The AJC was the first media outlet to break this story, saying after they were tipped off. They contacted the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Health Care System hospital, in Decatur, and they confirmed that it had ten pallets of unprocessed mail in the basement and that a worker had already brought the matter to their attention. VA officials responded with a statement, saying the VA “takes very seriously our mission to provide top quality care to our veterans in a safe and secure environment.” An unidentified worker disagreed, speaking with the AJC on a condition of anonymity, they said “Apparently everybody is working from home, and it’s just piling up and piling up.”

After receiving its newest round of negative media coverage, the VA blamed the misplaced mail on departmental restructuring and backlogs caused by the coronavirus and pledged to hire more workers to help its four mailroom employees. The VA failed to respond to questions raised on how the mail was allowed to stack up without notice in the first place. What was also intriguing is that the VA told the AJC that they were not investigating the issue and no employees had been disciplined, which suggested that the fault lies with those at the top. That position has since changed, as Dr. David Walker, the newly appointed director of VA medical care for nearly all of Georgia and two other states, launched an investigation last week into what happened.

 A spokeswoman from Walker’s office said the investigation will be carried out by employees from outside the Atlanta VA. In addition, three VA employees with knowledge told the AJC that officials from the VA’s Office of the Inspector General showed up at the hospital.

Failure of documents reaching veterans, reaching outside doctors, and reaching the VA administration to add to records are complaints shared by several veterans that the AJC interviewed. One said he experienced diapering mail, and that has been often told that his medical records never arrived at the VA. “I am sending them in, and sending them in, and sending them in. And they say they never get them. It just goes into a black hole.”

The AJC has long tracked issues at the Atlanta VA including long waits for Georgia military veterans seeking medical treatment and complaints from some vets that when the VA approves care with non-VA doctors, the approval document, which is time-limited, has expired by the time they or their doctors receive it. The AJC reported on this in May in an article entitled, Backlog of military veterans awaiting medical care grows in Atlanta, where the reporter says, “The number of North Georgia veterans who had not gotten a response from the Atlanta VA Health Care System more than 30 days after applying for such help ballooned from about 6,700 last September to more than 18,000 in early May.”

The AJC has been expansive in its coverage of the Atlanta VA over the years which reflects a troubled agency. Their stories many issues such as the VA’s Decatur hospital being closed down for months In late 2019 and early 2020, for possible contamination and staff retraining; a veteran in the long-term care facility dying after being found covered with fire ant bites; expensive, expired surgical equipment and transplant materials being thrown out at the hospital amid mismanagement.

A Cobb County veteran told the AJC that he was not surprised by the news that mail had been sitting on a warehouse floor, unopened and described how he had struggled for years to get medical treatment from the VA or VA-approved doctors for health problems he developed after years in the Army, including combat in Iraq. He described how sending documents between the clinic, the hospital, and outside doctors has been problematic, with multiple documents disappearing. Many times, he has found himself restraining the process because of lost documents.