By Donovan Slack
Supervisors instructed employees to falsify patient wait times at Veterans Affairs’ medical facilities in at least seven states, according to a USA TODAY analysis of more than 70 investigation reports released in recent weeks.
Overall, those reports — released after multiple inquiries and a Freedom of Information Act request — reveal for the first time specifics of widespread scheduling manipulation.
Employees at 40 VA medical facilities in 19 states and Puerto Rico regularly “zeroed out” veteran wait times, the analysis shows. In some cases, investigators found manipulation had been going on for as long as a decade. In others, it had been just a few years.
In many cases, facility leaders told investigators they clamped down the scheduling improprieties after the Phoenix scandal, but in others, investigators found they had continued unabated.The manipulation masked growing demand as new waves of veterans returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as Vietnam veterans aged and needed more health care.
In 2014, The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, and other media revealed scheduling 
manipulation at Phoenix VA Medical Center and that dozens of veterans died while waiting for care. Subsequent reporting that year showed that similar problems extended nationwide. Investigators had said manipulation was “systemic,” but they did not identify which facilities had problems and how serious they were. The inspector general soon launched investigations of more than 100 facilities.
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