U.S. Veterans Affairs secretary visits VA

United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins toured the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center on Monday, handing out peer recognitions to five employees and discussing what he wants to see happening at that facility.

Collins, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, entered the room after being led on a tour Monday by Interim Medical Center Director Chandra Miller. 

Collins, who has had this position for about nine weeks, said it was a good time to take a trip to the Dublin VA campus, where he honored Darrin Robinson, peer support specialist; Keith Griffin, chief for center for development and civic engagement; Elizabeth Wilkins, nutrition and food service chief; Roger Richardson Jr., strategic planner; and Terence Oster, HR senior strategic business partner, as part of a peer recognition program. Each person shook hands with Collins and Congressmen Rick Allen and Austin Scott.

Collins admitted that there has been a lot of change happening at the Dublin VA. He said there are many who have done a good job while doing interim work to return the VA to the standards they want in Dublin.

“It is hard sometimes in those positions where you are not permanent to make those changes,” Collins said. “But they are doing what I like to see, which is to make a permanent change at getting a culture that puts the veteran first. That’s the one thing I promised President Trump after he nominated me. I asked him how he wanted me to handle things and he looked at me and said, ‘Take care of my veterans.’” 

Collins, who was born and raised in Georgia, said he is the first United States secretary of Veterans Affairs to visit the Dublin VA in 15 or more years.

“The VA itself is larger than the active duty army,” Collins said. “If the secretary of defense wants to call up the Army, I’ve got 20,000 more than he does. Our veteran population is actually declining in our country, and our veteran enrollment has stayed fairly steady and yet our enrollment has gone up. What that means is we’re going to be here to look at how we work on our community care. Some areas are going to be better, and some are not, and we’re going to work to make sure the veterans have that choice.”

There will be many changes going forward. Collins wants to make sure the veterans are being taken care of in Dublin.

“We have facilities like Dublin that we are pushing, and we’re making sure with the staff that we have now are putting veterans first,” Collins said. “That means change is coming. I have had about nine weeks of being in this job, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. When President Trump called me back he gave me a chance to put one thing forward and that’s the veteran. We’ve got to make sure we are pushing each other to do what we need to do.” 

Collins said he has heard a lot of rumors about the VA and has had to refute lies about the VA being closed.

“The VA is here to serve those veterans,” Collins said. “I’m here to tell you the truth about what we’re trying to do and how we’re going to make it better. We did contracts recently, just about 2 percent of them, and we found $360 million roughly that we took from contracts – that were writing Power Points and meeting notes – and put that back into community health care.” 

Allen was glad to get the opportunity to tour the VA with Collins.

“In my 10 years in Congress, this is the first secretary of the VA that asked me to come meet them and tour the (Dublin) VA facility,” he said. “He has promised me that he is going to come to Augusta in June. This administration is moving fast, and basically what they are looking at is where can we do the job better and taxpayers want accountability.”

Allen said they want to make sure they take care of the veterans. 

“Those who are not interested in that need to be reassigned somewhere else,” he said. “That’s the process that the Trump administration is going through and that’s the process that (Collins) is doing. He is on the ground and that’s where you find out where the challenges are.” 

Scott also was glad for the opportunity to meet Dublin VA employees. 

“There are a lot of good things going on here,” Scott said. “It was good to have Doug Collins down here. We want to make sure we keep the mission first and that we’re taking care of veterans. I feel very good where the facility is. We need to get permanent leadership in here. There is a lot of people here doing a lot of great work.” 

Scott admitted he has not been to the VA in Dublin in a while. But he knows the VA is important for the veterans and that was why it was important to be with Collins, his friend. 

“He is putting the focus on veterans health care and veteran suicide,” Scott said. “This facility is going to continue to be a big part of veteran healthcare.”

Collins admitted that the VA is not perfect. 

“But we are striving to get better,” he said. “What I have found is that when veterans get into the system, and actually make it through the lathering of paper work and make it to the nurses and doctors (and other care), they actually feel like they are getting good care. We see that in our trust scores. When most of the world points at a bureaucratic organization that doesn’t work, the VA is one of the first ones that gets named. And we’ve earned that in some ways and we’re looking at changing that.” 

When asked about changing the culture, Collins wants the veterans to be first and to have doctors and nurses helping the veterans more, instead of going through paperwork. 

“We need to see how we can do that better,” Collins said. “We’ve opened five new CBOCs (Community-Based Outpatient Clinics) just in the last three months, which is something we are really proud of. But we’ve also got system-wide issues on how we take care of our buildings better and how do we do our recruitment and that’s when I work with our Congress to see how we can do better incentives to make sure that we can keep the best employees. … But when it comes to changing culture, let it be known that if you don’t want to help veterans or be a part of making a veteran’s life better, then I encourage you to go find someplace else. Good people will not stay where bad people are tolerated and no longer will bad service be tolerated at the VA.”

When asked about cuts, Collins said they may happen. 

“If you are forward facing with our patient care and forward facing with this community, those are jobs we’ve got to have,” he said. “We are looking behind the scenes to see where we can do it better. We are adding employees at the VA every week. The question is are we putting them in the right places? Maybe we have the opportunity to look at things differently.” 

Collins wants to see the VA improve in the area of homeless veterans and veteran suicide. When it comes to homeless veterans there are 40 thousand who do not have adequate housing.

“That is not suitable anymore,” Collins said.

He said they are spending $588 million for suicide prevention and the number of those committing suicide has not changed.

“It’s about 6,400 to about 6,900 a year, and it has been since 2008,” Collins said. “I will not tolerate that. I’m doing a variety of social media and podcasts to tell the veteran they are not on their own. We will spend more than ($588 million) if that means the numbers are going down because every life is precious, especially those veterans who serve our community.” 

He is proud of the Dublin VA’s leadership team, but he wants to get a permanent leadership team there. 

“When leadership keeps changing, it makes it harder for the employees to have some continuity here,” Collins said. “I don’t tolerate a culture that we just move people who are not doing good things. If you aren’t doing good things in the VA we are going to look to move you out. We want good leadership in place so that they can have a long time permanency and they will have anything they need here to move us forward.”