New VA hotline chief has a history of dropped calls from veterans Gregg Zoroya
, USA TODAY A former Air Force officer chosen to fix the VA's problem-plagued
suicide hotline has been running other agency phone banks that have a poor
record of service, dropping as many as one in five calls from veterans,
according
to internal data provided to USA TODAY. The deputy secretary for the Department
of Veterans Affairs, Sloan Gibson, defended the choice of Matthew Eitutus
overseeing the crisis hotline, telling USA TODAY Friday that Eitutus has shown
considerable initiative for one of the agency's biggest challenges just
answering the phone. The crisis hotline (800-273-8255), created in 2007 to deal
with rising numbers of veterans threatening suicide, was acclaimed in an
Oscar-winning documentary last year, but last month was revealed in an
inspector general report to have allowed calls to go to voicemail. At a Senate
hearing
on Thursday, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., revealed that 30-year-old Army veteran Tom
Young, who served in Iraq, committed suicide last July after failing to
reach someone on the suicide hotline. Gibson announced in February that he was
shifting management of the crisis line from medical officials to a VA business
office run by Eitutus, 46, a retired Air Force major who has masters degrees in
public health and human resources, and has worked eight years for the VA.
The last two years, Eutitus has been in charge of the VA's Health Resource
Center, which operates centers that field hundreds of thousands of calls each
day from veterans or family members seeking information on issues such as
benefits, co-payments or pharmacy information. In January, Eitutus was named
acting director of an umbrella office called Member Services, which oversees
Health Resource Center and other units. Internal data on call center operations
provided to USA TODAY by VA whistle-blower Scott Davis shows that in the 12
months prior to January, the phone banks at the Health Resource Center had
a call "abandonment rate" of 26%. Abandonment rates reflect calls where
veterans hang up, often because they've waited so long for an answer. The
average
wait time for an answer to a call into the Health Resource Center phone banks
was between two to six minutes during 2015, according to the data. The family
of Army veteran Tom Young of Des Plaines, Ill., said he committed suicide by
laying down on train tracks on July 23 after trying to call the VA crisis
line. He is shown in this photo with daughters, Maggie, 2 and Vivie, 6. (Photo:
Young family) "It shows that Mr. Eitutus's office has a history of dropping
calls from veterans," said Davis, who works in the VA's national enrollment
center, which falls under Member Services. "I don't know how someone can look
at the performance of that operation and say, 'This is a guy we should give a
promotion to.' But Gibson, who did not dispute the accuracy of the data,
said that before Eutitus was placed in charge of the Health Resource Center and
its phone banks, the VA wasn't even sure how many calls it was missing.
"One of the biggest challenges we have right now, and quite frankly it's a low
bar, is answering the phone," Gibson said. He said the rapid growth of the
number of veterans seeking medical care or benefits from the VA has grown so
rapidly and overwhelmed such services. Gibson said that in the two years Eitutis
ran the Health Resource Center, he expanded the number of phone lines so that
the office was finally able to gauge how many calls it was missing, and he
has since launched a program to expand staffing and reduce the number of
abandoned calls to zero. Gibson said Eutitus also corrected problems at a
smaller
phone bank, the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans. Eitutis told USA
TODAY the call abandonment rate at the Homeless Veterans call center dropped
under his leadership from an estimated 70% to 80% a year ago down to 3%. This
photo provided by HBO Documentary Films show a scene from the documentary
short film, "Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1," directed by Ellen Goosenberg
Kent. The film won an Oscar in 2015 for documentary short subject. (Photo:
AP) "I want to be very clear and unambiguous," Gibson said Friday. "There is no
individual in the entire department that I've got more confidence in than
Matt (Eitutis) to come in and fix the issues of the veterans crisis line. The
VA crisis line receives about 1,200 calls per day and saves about 35 lives
per day, those who are threatening suicide, according to the agency.
