More than a third of calls to the Veterans Crisis Line, a hotline used by suicidal veterans, are not answered by main staffers, but are transferred to backup centers where messages often go to voicemail and staff are less trained.
According to an internal email by former director of the crisis line Greg Hughes, employees regularly leave work before their shift is over, and even when they are on shift, they sometimes answer just five calls a day, the Associated Press reports.
In the internal email, Hughes, who left his position about a week after he sent the email, added that workers “spend very little time on the phone or engaged in assigned productive activity.”
Between 35 to 40 percent of calls in May, for example, were transferred to backup centers.
And at least in the past, many of those calls to backup centers went straight to voicemail. Employees didn’t even know a voicemail system existed.
There are real-world consequences to not responding to veterans. In July 2015, the VA refused to answer the call of one suicidal veteran, and so he walked over to train tracks and laid down. He was killed shortly after.
“Veterans sacrificed their lives to defend our freedoms, and when they get home, they deserve the absolute best health care our country has to offer,” Dan Caldwell, vice president of Policy and Communications at Concerned Veterans for America, said in a statement. “It’s mind-blowing that Washington bureaucrats can stomach reading report after report on VA failures, and still sit there and do nothing.”
To help remedy the disaster, the House assented to a bill Monday mandating that the VA respond to all attempts at communication with a timely fashion.
“A veteran in need cannot wait for help, and any incident where a veteran has trouble with the Veterans Crisis Line is simply unacceptable,” said GOP Rep. David Young, sponsor of the bill.
An inspector general report released earlier this year found that nearly two dozen people who called the VCL in fiscal year 2014 had their calls sent straight to voicemail.
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