The embattled head of Veterans Affairs in Hawaii is defending himself from a barrage of congressional criticism and said Friday he doesn’t plan to step down despite calls by U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for his ouster for what she sees as dishonesty and incompetence.
Wayne Pfeffer, director of the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System for the past nine months, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday that he apologized to congressional staffers for any misunderstanding about how long veterans wait for health care and wants to meet with Gabbard personally.
"I am very concerned, and I am trying to do everything I can do to mend the relationship," said Pfeffer, 62, who has worked for the VA for 40 years. "It was a misunderstanding of the information that I tried to explain rather than any attempt on my part to misrepresent the figures."
In aletter Friday to Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Sloan Gibson, Gabbard wrote that Pfeffer "should be fired due to his dishonesty, lack of integrity, incompetence and his flagrant lack of transparency when dealing with those to whom he is ultimately accountable to — the American people and veterans who defend freedom when faced with certain peril."
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, in a written statement, said she does not support Gabbard’s call that Pfeffer should be fired.
Instead, Hirono said "there are procedures in place at the VA to review his performance so that disciplinary action can be taken if appropriate." Hirono also wants to wait for the outcome of an independent investigation of VA’s wait times that she has requested.
U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa issued a statement saying the priority now should not be on pointing fingers, but on addressing problems at the VA and getting veterans the services they’re entitled to. Yet, she said unspecified "immediate action" would be called for if "disturbing" allegations about manipulating records are true.
The congresswoman said she called for a report on the VA’s Hawaii operations in April but hasn’t yet received a response.
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz declined to comment Friday on the matter. Last week he wrote to Richard J. Griffin, the VA’s acting inspector general, asking him to look into "secondhand" information from VA doctors and nurses that staffers at the Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center were asked "to wipe their computers clean regarding patient wait times." Schatz said Hawaii VA staffers were reportedly ordered to "cook the books" regarding patients’ appointments.
Pfeffer told the Associated Press on Friday that those allegations didn’t really make sense because all the information his schedulers enter into the computer is automatically saved in a national database.
"I wish he would contact me or send me specifics on who might be doing it," Pfeffer said. "I’m certainly not doing that, and I don’t believe my top staff is doing that. But if somebody in the ranks is doing that, I want to know it and take appropriate action."
In her letter, Gabbard referred to statements she said Pfeffer made during a June 5 meeting with congressional staff members at the federal building in Honolulu.
In a response to a question from a member of Gabbard’s staff, Pfeffer reportedly said that the current wait time in Hawaii for new patients at the VA was about 30 days. At the same meeting, Gabbard said, a member of Pfeffer’s staff from the VA’s enrollment department confirmed that the wait time for new patients was between 30 and 50 days.
That was just four days before a critical audit by the VA revealed that new patients in Honolulu actually had the worst wait times in the entire system, 145 days.
Pfeffer told the Star-Advertiser that on June 5 he didn’t know that the wait time for new patients was 145 days since they didn’t have that information, which had been collected by his Washington, D.C., office from several sources for a report released Monday.
Further, Pfeffer said he believed Gabbard’s staffer misinterpreted his response pertaining to new patient wait times. Pfeffer said he recalled using a figure of 53 days in reference to the time it took in mid-May for a new patient to get an appointment after being notified. Since then that figure has been cut down to three weeks, he added.
"I tried to explain what I could," Pfeffer said. "Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but I certainly wasn’t trying to deceive her."
He said he told Gabbard’s staff Friday that he wants to meet her and is willing to go to Washington to clear the air. He is waiting for a response from Gabbard.
Pfeffer said he still doesn’t have the number of newly enrolled veterans waiting for care in Hawaii or the longest wait time a new enrollee has experienced — information that Gabbard also wants.
In her three-page letter to Gibson, Gabbard said that four days after the June 5 briefing, Pfeffer denied ever discussing wait times during that meeting.
"This blatant display of dishonesty undermines the nature of public service; additionally, it reflects an arrogant disregard for our veterans, and being held accountable to the American people," she wrote.
Pfeffer was appointed to lead the Hawaii operations in October by then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The Kauai-born retired Army general was driven from office by the growing nationwide scandal over the agency’s health care system. He resigned May 30.
Pfeffer also said there have been misunderstandings about information released by his office May 28 stating there were no problems at VA facilities here involving access and scheduling. That audit, requested by Shinseki, dealt only with determining whether anyone here was "gaming" the system and manipulating data dealing with appointment scheduling, he said.
Pfeffer has served in various capacities at 11 medical centers. Before coming to Hawaii, he served as director of the VA Medical Center in Louisville, Ky., from July 2005 until September and associate director at a Lexington, Ky., VA facility for 13 years.
