Sen. Mark Warner says there is no reason for a veteran to wait so long for a doctor's appointment. He says the wait for a primary-care appointment at the Hampton V.A. Medical Center is nearly a month.
Warner has been pushing administrators to cut that time, and they have, but not quickly enough for him.
So he's asking a team of experts to look at how the facility is managed, and find ways to manage it better.
“Basically I have gotten tired of some of the excuses and now I want to see results,” says Sen. Warner.
The democratic senator says the medical center did have a lot of professionals leave last year. But since then, more have been hired. He wants wait times for veterans to drop to seven days -- the national average -- or even less. He says, at the very least, veterans deserve to know they are a priority.
“What I want to see is this continued sense of urgency. It shouldn`t take a United States senator visiting a facility three or four times to get this sense of urgency, to make sure veterans are getting the kind of quality care in a timely fashion they deserve,” says Sen. Warner.
