Summary: The Service Treatment Record Life Cycle Management Process

Training is used to build knowledge and skills after employees have made the personal decision to support the change.

Decision-making in the workforce is a process of responsibilities used by upper management to implement, enforce rules, regulations, and maintain a successful environment. Decision-making implemented more effectively by making a plan, thinking it through, accepting more than one opinion and determining what is best. However, decision-making often utilized more effectively by opening doors of opportunities for a suggestion, question, discussion, and feedback. Although, more involvement helps improve understanding, utilize behavior skills and present opportunities for better communication. Everyday life consists of decision-making, the right decision may not always be applied, but ensure room for improvement and opportunity. Individuals approached decision-making in many different ways. As stated by (Jones, Graham, & Bateman, 2006) decision making is a procedure used to recognize a problem, weigh the alternatives and evaluate a solution in which, certain situations will require different approaches to become effective.

In many cases, soldiers didn’t seek treatment in fear that their military careers would come to an end. Others were on waiting lists or were directed to the bottom of the list among treatment providers without getting consistent care, or seemed to slip under the radar completely.

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) has been tasked with providing support and benefits to Veterans after they have completed their service. However, many Veterans are reporting difficulty accessing care due to systematic barriers within the VA’s Veterans Health Administration (Oliver, 2007). Complex eligibility requirements, long wait lists and lack of providers are a few of the issues Veterans are faced with when trying to access health and mental health care. Additionally, studies indicate that veterans, predominantly those from the recent wars in Iran and Iraq, have disproportionately high amounts of mental illness (Shim & Rust, 2013). These same veterans are experiencing difficulty accessing mental health care due to issues around a backlog of healthcare eligibility applications and a shortage of mental health providers through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which operates the Nation’s largest, integrated health care delivery system (APA, 2014). In 2014, at the request of the Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) evaluated the merit of the allegations of mismanagement at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) and the Health Eligibility Center (HEC).

Over the past 15 years, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has seen a dramatic increase in the average degree of disability, growth in the number of compensation recipients, a rise in the number of medical issues claimed and an increased level of complexity of claimed issues. To illustrate this point, prior to the September 2011 terrorist attacks, 333,700 Veterans received compensation at the 70-100 percent level; however, these figures rose to over 1.1 million by the end of 2013. Additionally, since 2009, VA’s disability compensation workload rose 132 percent. This is in large part due to an unprecedented demand resulting from over a decade of war, military downsizing, economic issues, increased outreach, the addition of presumptive conditions and an aging Veteran population.

In organizational decision making, many individuals should be involved in order to ensure that everyone involved or touched by organizational activities in one way or another is not affected negatively by the decisions made and arrived at by decision makers. Consulting widely before making a decision enables decision makers in the organization make all-round and informed decisions, and decisions that satisfy anyone who is in any way connected to the organization (Donna, 2012). In an organization, clients are the ones who are served by the organization. The

Current funding for veteran healthcare care is low and insufficient because of the large number of veterans, who are being discharged from the military as the country transitions to a democratic President. According to Dr. Rachel Nardin in her article about veteran healthcare, “Soldiers get excellent acute care when injured on active duty, but as revelations of poor conditions for soldiers receiving ongoing outpatient care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center highlighted, service members often have trouble getting the care they need once active duty ends” (Nardin 1)

Data released in October 2014 indicated an average wait time of approximately 50 days for new primary care appointments, with a range of 2 to 122 days across all VA/VHA facilities (VA, 2014c). The OIG found that VHA was not meeting the outline standards, forcing some veterans to wait as many as 60 days for an initial evaluation. This caused a great setback in meeting the measurements set forth by OIG and caused a hindrance on veterans who have returned home from war and dealing with physical and mental health aliments and disabilities. The research study will be conducted to examine the circumstances preventing veterans from receiving new patient appointments in a timely matter. Since 2012, this researcher has witnessed the VA make great efforts to implement recommendations from OIG, however, the shortage of (1) healthcare provider availability, staffing, and (2) scheduling practices with out-of-date technology continues to cause delay in effective

The Veterans Affair has always claimed to take pride in their timeliness care. What they were not offering was the truth about how they were getting these numbers. They were changing the dates on paper work and falsely recording in the database. The patient’s charts were altered in order to lessen the effect of their conditions, along with performing useless procedures to make the time seem more favorable. Schedulers were pressured into using unofficial waitlist and other inaccurate paper work in justifying these wait times. It has been proven that the extended waiting periods have led to many deaths within the Veterans Affairs care system. An incident surrounding the wait was when “Thomas Breen, a 71-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, With a history of bladder cancer, Breen called his Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix for a follow-up appointment. He had to wait months to receive treatment. In the meantime, his family took him to a private hospital where he was diagnosed with bladder cancer”(Hankel,1). Thomas Breen had passed away before ever hearing back from his Veterans Affairs hospital. This story is important in understanding that the wait times for the Veterans Affair program are causing deaths in our Veteran population. This story allows one to understand how long the wait times could be for this care, but the question aroused from this is what is allowing the Veterans

Josh Hicks, author at The Washing Post, says that the Veterans Affairs has an ongoing problem of delays in servicing veterans. “Phoenix VA hospital kept delays off the books with secret wait lists that allegedly included dozens of patients who died while waiting for care” (Hicks 1). “Several patients died at an Atlanta clinic because of mismanagement” (Hicks 1). “A Department clinic in Fort Collins, Colorado, falsified appointment records to give the impression that staff doctors saw patients within the agency’s goal of 14 days” (Hicks 1). In addition to these issues, other veterans waiting to hear if their disability claims had been approved for care were waiting in excess of 125 days without determination. Retired four-star Army General Eric Shinseki, serving

opportunity to share in this process and to have the confidence to put ideas forward that can be

Veteran has four admission and discharges in CAVHS in her record: June 2012 (3K); August 2012 (3K); March 2014 (SICU); July 2014 (3K). She has also received care from Biloxi and Texas VAMC 's in the past. Veteran served in the US Army between October/2004 to March/2004, with an Entry Level Separation (ELS- Medical) discharge and her highest rank were an E-3. Veteran reported she received an injury while

This method will help them find and appreciate possibilities together for pursuing enduring resolutions that will positively impact communities, future generations and the company. It will also ensure that both the company and the communities will always understand each other 's interests, issues, needs and concerns. Also, they support programs and institutions that contribute to building an educated and engaged workforce7. This enriches the individual’s skills and also provides skilled workforce for the company as they will be operating in a knowledge and skill rich environment.

This ability to approach problems from various different angles helps bring creativity to the work environment, helping me, and those I work with, to think outside the box and tackle each issue we face with creativity.

Change within the policy process could also be responsive to triggers of change within the system. Managing the change that may happen during the policy process from policy initiation to its implementation help ensure that the policy succeed. The implementation is particularly more important as it is the aspect that “gets the job done”.