Despite an infusion of extra money and staff, the wait times for veterans at VA hospitals continue to get worse. More than a year after a scandal broke over U.S. military veterans enduring extremely long waits to see doctors at clinics run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), things have actually gone from bad to worse. The number of cases in which appointments took 30 or more days to happen has increased by 67 percent in the past year, despite more money and more staff dedicated to the VA. Jim Hudson, an Army veteran from California who served on the front lines during the Vietnam War, has spent most of his post-war life advocating for other disabled veterans. But he still has to be his own advocate just to get the healthcare he’s owed by the VA. Hudson, 66, spent 14 years in the military. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other service-related psychiatric issues. Yet, he still has to wait six months just to see a VA psychiatrist. “I have PTSD, anxiety, and depressive disorders, and several other issues,” Hudson told Healthline. “I’m on multiple medications. Six months is far too long to wait.” Mark Trifeletti, a Gulf War veteran from New York, is in the same boat. Trifeletti suffers from chronic pain, and has been waiting more than three months for emergency surgery to fix a device surgically implanted at the base of his spine that was meant to give him some relief. “I don’t have any idea if or when they’ll come through with the surgery appointment,” he said. “The pain is horrible. VA is still a mess.” Read More: Vietnam Veterans Still Have PTSD 40 Years After the War »

Wait Times Keep Getting Longer These veterans’ complaints are all too familiar. For many former service personnel seeking care at VA hospitals and clinics, long delays remain de rigueur — despite the fact that the issue has exploded into the public consciousness. In 2014, whistleblowers inside the Phoenix VA hospital said staff members there were manipulating reports on wait times to make the facility look better. Some 40 veterans died in Phoenix, reportedly while waiting to see a doctor. Virtually every major news organization covered the story. Then it snowballed. Within a few months of the Phoenix revelations, more than 100 VA healthcare facilities across the nation had been implicated for the same or similar types of behavior. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to resign while President Obama and members of Congress weighed in with outrage. But neither a $16 billion bill passed largely to reduce wait times and fix systemic corruption at the agency, nor the introduction of a new program allowing veterans to seek private care if their wait was too long, have fixed the problem. Earlier this month, Shinseki’s successor, VA Secretary Robert McDonald, said the number of appointments that had not been completed within 30 days has grown from 300,000 to nearly 500,000. And the Phoenix VA is still a quagmire. CNN recently reported that the Phoenix VA had 8,000 requests from veterans for care in August for which wait times exceeded 90 days. Veterans with cancer reportedly died waiting for care and medical treatment, while care for almost 1,500 others was delayed because of short staffing and mismanagement. According to the Washington Post, senior officials at the Phoenix VA did virtually nothing to respond to the severe staffing shortage as recently as April of this year, a full year since the scandal broke. Read More: Painful Headaches Plaguing Many U.S. War Veterans »

There’s Some Good News But not all the news is bad for veterans. Efforts by President Obama and Congress to improve the situation at VAs have succeeded on several fronts. In a Veterans Day speech two weeks ago, the President noted that the veteran disability claims backlog was at 76,000, an 88 percent reduction from its peak in March 2013. However, what the president did not mention is the fact that while the backlog has been substantially cut, it may have been accomplished by rejecting a larger proportion of claims. Exhibit A: The number of appealed claims is way up. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the number of appealed disability claims went from 167,412 in September 2005 to 425,480 this October, an all-time high. Read More: Female Marine Breaks Silence on PTSD Struggles »

Why Are Wait Times so High? So why can’t the VA get a handle on wait times? One reason is that far more veterans are coming to the VA for services than ever before. The VA says it has hired more doctors and nurses, but it has also had 3 million more appointments in the latest fiscal year than the previous one. McDonald says veterans believe that the VA is finally going to put veterans first, so more are coming in. There have also been a lot of reported snags with the Choice Program, which was designed to allow veterans facing long waits or long drives to receive care from private sector doctors. Congress has taken several steps to strengthen the program, including adjusting driving distances for appointments and opening the program up to more veterans. But Trifelettie, who turned to the Choice Program for quicker help, said the program has been a disaster for him. “I can authorize a visit to a doctor with the Choice Program one day, then the next day I call them and they have no authorization,” he said. “Their left hand doesn’t know what their right hand is doing.” Read More: Brain Scan Can Tell PTSD Apart from Traumatic Brain Injury »