ms. draper you're recognized for five minutes. ms. draper: thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss vetance -- veterans' access to health care hfpblgt my testimony is gaysed on g.a.o.'s ongoing body of work in this area, including most recently a report publicly released yesterday on newly enrolled veterans' access to primary care. i wish i was here today to discuss better news but unfortunately that's not the case. since 2000 and in particular oferte past five years, we have consistently reported on v.a.'s failure to ensure veterans' timely access to health care. in 2012, we found the outpatient medical appointment wait time data were unreliable, implementation of the scheduling policy was inconsistent across medical if a sirblingts telephone access was problematic, and scheduling resources were not effectively allocated. in 2014, we found that access to outpatient specialty care was problematic due to mismanagement of the consult process, including poor oversight and the lack of clear policies. in 2015 we looked at v

ms. draper just mentioned we failed. we failed too many. but a lot of them, frankly, those facilities just weren't able to get in touch with or when we did they didn't want the appointments is. >> okay. time has expired but i've got one more question i want to ask you. because a lot of folks have talked about accountability at the table and wanting to hold people accountable for things they have done. in the media, there have been examples including an employee who participated in an armed robbery. a chief of staff that was improperly prescribing drugs to someone's wife a nurse who is being charged with manslaughter in the death of a veteran patient. they're all still on the payroll. similarly, according to the weekly list that va provides to the committee in the wake of the nationwide wait time manipulation scandal, va has successfully fired only four people for wait time manipulation. how is any of this possible? especially those on the front end who have been -- some of them have been convicted of crimes. >> yeah. it seems hard to believ

ms. draper just mentioned we failed. we failed too many. but a lot of them, frankly, those facilities just weren't able to get in touch with or when we did they didn't want the appointments is. >> okay. time has expired but i've got one more question i want to ask you. because a lot of folks have talked about accountability at the table and wanting to hold people accountable for things they have done. in the media, there have been examples including an employee who participated in an armed robbery. a chief of staff that was improperly prescribing drugs to someone's wife a nurse who is being charged with manslaughter in the death of a veteran patient. they're all still on the payroll. similarly, according to the weekly list that va provides to the committee in the wake of the nationwide wait time manipulation scandal. va has successfully fired only four people for wait time manipulation. how is any of this possible? especially those on the front end who have been -- some of them have been convicted of crimes. >> yeah. it seems hard to believ

ms. draper a question.tioned the scheduleder and that perhaps they're not getting adequate training. we all know that a scheduleder is an entry level job. do you think that the va kneads to do more to upgrade? once a person is trained in that position, if they see another opening, they want to move up. >> yeah, let me back up a little bit. i think training is an issue but i think it's much more complicated than that. there's oversight. the scheduling system is prone to user error. there's a lot of things that familiar tore in to the errors. the scheduliers is industry level. it's the number one or two position with turns over each year. there's not really a good career path for those individuals and what we've heard is that when someone demonstrates a high level capability they're often scooped up and move somewhere else. i think at one point a couple years ago they instituted in some places a gs 6, there was a career path and my understanding is that doesn't exist any longer. so i do think -- if you put th