News

By Patricia Murphy, KUOW Radio, Seattle
December 4, 2014

A federal audit of a 24-hour national hotline for homeless veterans found that callers didn’t always receive assistance or access to needed services.

The Office of the Inspector General said lapses in management and oversight at the call center led to more than 40,000 missed opportunities to help.

By Leo Shane III
Military Times Staff writer
Oct. 23, 2014 - 12:03PM

Only about one in 25 veterans offered free credit monitoring in the wake of Veterans Affairs Department security breaches has signed up for the service, a figure that VA officials call disappointingly low.

Nearly 1 million veterans have had their personal information potentially compromised over the last seven years, a total that officials call upsetting but insist sits well below comparable private-sector security breaches.

The Red River Valley Writing Project is offering a six-week workshop called "Warrior Words" for veterans of any U.S. war. The workshop is funded by a North Dakota Humanities Council grant, received by the Greater Grand Forks Community Theater. The goal of the workshop is to provide support for veterans to write a monologue about their experiences and share that monologue with the public. RRVWP teacher Lori Koenig, will lead the workshop. Meetings will take place in the Dawson Conference Room of the Fargo Public Library, Main branch, from 10-11:30am.

By Tom Philpott
Special to Stars and Stripes
Published: July 31, 2014 

Note: In addition to the $15 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday a measure in the bill calling for leases on 27 new medical centers in 15 states and Puerto Rico would cost about $1.27 billion.

Veterans reading only headlines, hearing only sound bites, might have a few misconceptions about how Congress and the VA plan to use non-VA healthcare providers to ensure more timely and convenient access to care.

By Leo Shane III 
Military Times Staff writer
Jun. 3, 2014 - 04:01PM

Lawmakers from both parties want major changes in how the Veterans Affairs Department operates — and that will make it difficult to enact any changes at all.

Senate Democrats and Republicans this week are offering competing plans for VA reform, including making it easier to fire top department officials and cutting wait times for veterans in need of health care.

Veterans are using Whisper to share the most intimate details of their struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

posted on April 24, 2014 at 4:02pm EDT
Neetzan Zimmerman
BuzzFeed Contributor

BY MARK BERMAN, Washington Post
April 7, 2014

BY CHRIS ADAMS
McClatchy Washington Bureau | February 27, 2014

WASHINGTON — The average time for a denied claim to work its way through the cumbersome Department of Veterans Affairs appeals process shot up to more than 900 days last year, double the department’s long-term target.

After hovering between 500 and 750 days for the past decade, what the VA refers to as its “appeals resolution time” hit 923 days in fiscal 2013. That was a 37 percent jump in one year, from 675 in fiscal 2012, according to a review of the department’s annual performance report.