From the Rapid City Journal, apparently a VA Department whistleblower is calling out the VA and claiming that the VA call center being proposed was just a ruse to ease the sting of shutting down the facility:
The Atlanta, Ga., man, who works as a spokesman for the VA Health Eligibility Center, has testified before Congress about previous alleged misdeeds within the department.
On March 10, Davis dropped a new allegation against the VA regarding the proposed Hot Springs Member Services Call Center, with his boss, VA Secretary David J. Shulkin.
Davis contends that the call center and promises of 120 new jobs is more ruse than reality. He said it was the VA’s way of creating a good news story about what was happening to the Hot Springs VA hospital, and was a way to ease the pain of losing some 300 hospital jobs that will be shifted to Rapid City or elsewhere due to the department’s planned reconfiguration of the Black Hills Health Care System.
In a letter to Shulkin dated March 10, Davis explains how the Hot Springs Call Center was supposed to help the Atlanta Health Eligibility Center provide service to veterans seeking VA health care. The Health Eligibility Center helps veterans find care and enroll in VA programs.
He tells Shulkin in the letter that no computer equipment was ordered through the VA’s Office of Information and Technology for employees in Hot Springs to use prior to being hired. Call center staff members claim this is an ongoing problem, Davis says, and he wonders how people can do their jobs without computers.
Read the entire story here at the Rapid City Journal
There are not a lot of call center jobs that don’t require computers, so this gentleman may be on to something. This might be a good one for our Delegation to take up with the Department.