On the eve of Veterans Day, the Veterans Affairs Department is announcing a reorganization designed to make it easier for veterans to gain access to the sprawling department and its many websites.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald calls the reorganization the largest in the department's history and says it will bring a singular focus on customer service to an agency that serves 22 million veterans.
It's called My VA.
The department will hire a chief customer service officer and will create a single regional framework that will encompass all aspects of the agency, from health care to benefits, loan centers and even cemetery plots. The VA now has nine organizational maps and at least a dozen websites, many with their own user names and passwords. It will also involve clearing out less effective employees and hiring nearly 30,000 more.
McDonald hopes to complete the reorganization within a year.
Here locally, some of those changes are already taking place.
Reno's VA hospital has added same-day appointments in its primary care clinics as well as more technology like teleconferenced appointments for rural vets.
VA officials say it's a massive organization and major reform will take time. "An organization this large-- it's not going to be lost on us that we are not always going to know if we are doing the right thing unless somebody speaks up and tell you you're doing it wrong, or you need to fix this,” says Darin Farr, VA Sierra Nevada Healthcare System.
And one of the biggest reforms comes in the issuance of veterans' choice cards which allow vets to see non-VA doctors.
Thousands of those are already in the mail.
(The Associated Press also contributed to this report.)
