from the government accountability office, the gao, we have the director of health care deborah draper. finally, joining us today is philip forman, senior research fellow at the new america foundation. thank you all very much for being here. mr. griffin, you may begin. may. >> mr. chairman >> mr. chairman, ranking member, members of the committee, thank you for the opporunity to provide testimony at this hearing. i would like to provide an overview of our ongoing review at the phoenix health care the aig has assembled a multidisciplinary team, comprised of auditors, health care inspectors, board-certified -- to address these allegations. our team toted focus on two questions. where the facilities electronic waitlist or parsley amended the names of veterans waiting for care, and if so, at whose direction. number two, whether the depths ofany of these -- the deaths any of these veterans were related to delaying care. this, we the bottom of have an exhaustive review underway that includes seven parts. number one, interviewing staff with knowledge of patient scheduling practices and schedu

and deborah draper, newest reporting is that va's own wait list data is unreliable.ment accountability office and the person in charge of that, deborah draper, has been reporting on these problems with the reliability of the data for a decade at the va. which makes this sound we heard over the weekend about the president being mad just seem rather hallow. look at what his chief of staff said on sunday. >> the president is madder than hell and i've got the scars to prove it given briefings i have given the president and the conversations that he and rick and i have had on these matters. at the same time we look at accountability, we want to provide our veterans the services they have earned. >> if the president is truly mad as hell, he should be mad at himself and his staff for not only ignoring our reporting but the government's own reporting that shows this was a problem and in fact ignoring his own campaign promise of seven years ago. >> drew griffin reporting live from washington. thanks so much. >>> still to come in the "newsroom," jill abramson speaking out publ

policy and deborah draper said "staff at clinics changed desired dates to show v.a.'s performance within the goals. >> if we are serious about making sure our veterans are properly paid care and about a clean energy economy, then we have to fix congress. >> putting the blame on congress on this one is going to be tough. the white house is supporting secretary shinseki right now in face of calls for his resignation from at least a couple of republican senators but more importantly the american legion. but speaker boehner says firing shinseki isn't going to solve the problem. >> i'm not ready to join the chorus of people calling for him to step down. there is a systemic management issue throughout the v.a. that needs to be addressed. and i don't believe that just changing someone at the top is going to actually get to the solutions that many of us are looking for. >> nbc's chief correspondent jim miklaszewski has been reporting on this for some time now this is something i've heard over the last six months, this is a systemic issue inside the v.a. >> absolutely. histori

deborah draper says the data collection and record keeping and most specifically, the oversight here is so bad that nobody knows what happened to those patient records, whether or not they were cleared for a good reasons, bad reasons or simply just purged from the books. so right now they have no clue. >> the american legion called for aaron shinseki to resign. he's cabinet secretary. have you heard from the white house at haall? >> we did reach out. we got a statement back saying the president, the white house is waiting for the inspector general's report. that we are also anticipating, at least in the phoenix case, but we wanted to ask some broader questions. the president did apparently say this. the president remains confident in secretary shinseki's ability to lead the department and to take appropriate action based on the i.g.'s findings. and as you know tonight, anderson, the american legion thinks the appropriate action is to get rid of the veterans affairs secretary. >> and drew, i take it by the fact that you are standing in front of the v.a. outside the building, not insid

deborah draper did just that. thank you for being here. into the history of the warnings that your group has raised in addition to other inspector generals we were stunned. 2012, your group told the government, told the administration and congress that they were hiding wait times, fudging the numbers and back dating appointments to meet timeliness goals set by department headquarters. what's new? >> actually gao has been reporting on wait time problems and outpatient appointment cancelling issues since 2000. we issued a report in 2000, 2001 and most recently in 2012. these problems have been in existence for more than a decade. gao and the i.g. have reported on similar issues. >> it is just that the patients have been waiting too long or also that your group has -- you go in and look at organizations and do a forensic analysis of whether we're to believe their numbers. did you also find that they were as is alleged in the phoenix case and some of these more recent cases actively, you know, working to hide the truth. >> well we found they w

if deborah draper and the accountability office could work with survey monkey and survey the primary care doctors, nurses and collect the data on what they think the real waiting times are and give a one-week amnesty time to the directors to report their real wait iing tim. if they find a significant mismatch they need to go out there and audit them. if they're fudging the books at that point, just fire them and prosecute them to the maximum extent of the law. >> you're suggesting this three-week audit that secretary shinseki is talking about will not turn up the right information? >> complete waste of time and money. independent survey. survey monkey is -- multiple choice questions that are completely anonymous going to the gao so there wouldn't be any retaliation. they can get the actual data. i ask every patient how long have you been waiting? they said three, six, nine, 12 months. i pretty much knew at the time it was six to nine months when the administration was saying two. if you survey all the employees in primary care who deal with this, they could give you an accurate answe