WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 80 percent of senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs got performance bonuses last year despite widespread treatment delays and preventable deaths at VA hospitals and clinics, a top official said Friday. Workers at the Phoenix VA Health Care System — where officials have confirmed dozens of patients died while awaiting treatment — received about $3.9 million in bonuses last year, newly released records show. Kuster and other lawmakers said they found it hard to believe that 80 percent of senior employees could be viewed as exceeding expectations, given the growing uproar over patients dying while awaiting VA treatment and mounting evidence that workers falsified or omitted appointment schedules to mask frequent, long delays. Miller, the panel's chairman, noted that in the past four years, none of the VA's 470 senior executives have received ratings of minimally satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the two lowest ratings on the VA's five-tier evaluation system. The VA's inspector general has said that the bonus system — which has been suspended amid a criminal probe of wrongdoing at the agency — contributed to the fake record-keeping, since employees knew that bonuses for senior managers and hospital directors were based in part on on-time performance.
Reported by SeattlePI.com 2 hours ago.
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