Revamped Veterans' Health Care Now a Model

I can remember a time when people wouldn't trust their dog to the VA...--Dictynna

By Gilbert M. Gaul
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 22, 2005; Page A01

For years, the Department of Veterans Affairs' sprawling health care system was criticized by veterans groups and government investigators as a dangerous backwater of medicine. Report after report portrayed it as suffocating from top-heavy bureaucracy, dirty and unsafe hospitals, and little or no accountability. Thousands of eligible patients opted to get their care elsewhere.

But in the past decade, largely unnoticed by the public, the system has undergone a dramatic transformation and now is considered by some to be a model.