Indy VA "Surprised" By Second Audit

A new report finds that average waiting times for an appointment at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Indianapolis is 54 days.

The information is part of an internal audit by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Roudebush VA Medical Center says it is aware of the waiting time issues.

Spokesperson Julie Webb says this is due to two reasons.

"One, is a capacity issue which we acknowledge we do have a little bit of a capacity issue for new, primary care appointments, which we are working on," she said.  "The second is, a portion of that could be by patient preference.  If a patient is not available for an appointment due to vacations or other scheduling conflicts, sometimes they choose to be seen further out."

The report also flagged the medical center for needing to undergo further reviews after a first audit based on questions regarding scheduling and the process of scheduling.

Webb says she doesn’t know why.

"When that team left, there was no indication upon their exit that there was anything that was concerning or anything that they were going to report as an outlier," she said.  "Frankly, we were surprised that we were on the list for a phase two visit."

Webb says it’s unknown what a phase two visit entails and is not sure when it will happen.

The Indianapolis VA Medical Center serves about 61,000 patients a year.