By Gregg Zoroya
A former Air Force officer chosen to fix the VA’s problem-plagued suicide hotline has been running other agency phone banks that have a poor record of service, dropping as many as one in five calls from veterans, according to internal data provided to USA TODAY.
The deputy secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Sloan Gibson, defended the choice of Matthew Eitutis overseeing the crisis hotline, telling USA TODAY on Friday that Eitutis has shown considerable initiative for one of the agency’s biggest challenges — just answering the phone.
The crisis hotline (800-273-8255), created in 2007 to deal with rising numbers of veterans threatening suicide, was acclaimed in an Oscar-winning documentary last year, but last month was revealed in an inspector general report to
have allowed calls to go to voicemail.
At a Senate hearing on Thursday, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., revealed that 30-year-old Army veteran Tom Young, who served in Iraq, committed suicide last July after failing to reach someone on the suicide hotline.
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