The Department of Veterans Affairs runs a nursing home network of 130 community living centers throughout the nation. Although the VA has tracked detailed patient data for years, consumers looking to place family in these facilities didn’t have access to statistics on patient health outcomes in areas like pain management care, until last week.
The VA announced in a statement on June 12 that they made annual nursing home ratings public for the first time, and blamed the Obama administration for the lag, saying they “had resisted making certain VA quality data public. But under President Trump’s leadership, transparency and accountability have become hallmarks of VA.”
What the VA didn’t acknowledge was the investigation by USA Today and the Boston Globe that prompted the release — and the fact that watchdogs say there is still a long road ahead before real transparency is achieved.
Donovan Slack, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security correspondent with USA Today, joined The Show to explain.
