(TND) — Veteran trust in the Department of Veterans Affairs has reached a new high, the department announced this week.
Veteran trust in the VA has increased 25% since 2016.
The trust score, based on tens of thousands of surveys, reached 80.4% in the previous quarter.
The veterans who gave feedback tapped into VA services such as health care, disability compensation benefits, memorial affairs, the GI Bill and home loans.
Scores for overall ease, effectiveness and emotional resonance experienced by veterans also reached new highs, the VA said.
Meanwhile, the VA says it delivered more care and more benefits than ever before last year, including more than 116 million health care appointments and $163 billion in earned benefits.
“There’s nothing more important than earning the trust of the Veterans we serve,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a news release. “Veteran feedback is a critical part of VA’s strategy to increase Veteran access to their earned benefits and services. Surveys like this tell us what we’re getting right, and what we need to improve — so we can better serve those who served our country.”
So, is all good with the VA?
“For all those veterans who are out there (and) responded back to the survey and said they had a good experience, I think everybody's super happy for them,” said Darrell Owens, the director of government relations at America's Warrior Partnership. “Everyone wants the VA to succeed.”
But Owens said the VA’s survey only tells a partial story.
The nation has about 18 million veterans, and only around 9 million are enrolled in the VA.
And Owens said only a fraction of them are receiving services.
His advocacy group works with thousands of veterans every year, and he said one of the first questions they ask veterans is whether they’re in the VA.
There are a lot of veterans flying under the radar, he said.
Kaitlynne Yancy, director of policy and advocacy at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, noted that the majority of veterans who died by suicide in 2021, the most recent year for available data, were not seen in the VA’s health care system.
“While (the higher trust score) is something the VA can definitely celebrate, ... we're still focusing on those veterans that aren't utilizing the VA health care services,” Yancy said. “And what can we do to bring them into the fold? What can we do to reestablish trust and things along those lines?”
Owens said he’s heard encouraging feedback from veterans who have gotten VA services.
“I think within the system itself, once people get into the system and scheduled appointments and actually go talk with the doctors, I think everyone's generally had a pretty good experience,” he said.
Owens said reestablishing the authorities to deal with bad employees that were part of the 2017 Accountability Act would help ensure veterans continue to have good experiences at the VA.
“If you got 100,000 great employees, it only takes one bad one to ruin the trust of a lot of veterans out there, and that's terrible,” he said.
Yancy applauded recent veteran legislation, including the PACT Act and the Deborah Sampson Act, for VA improvements.
The PACT Act has been called the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic-exposed veterans and survivors in over 30 years.
“It's been a large number of veterans that have enrolled since the passage, and we're hearing a lot of good things,” Yancy said.
She said VA access for rural veterans continues to be a challenge.
Owens also said improving access to care needs to be a focus for the VA.
“Right now, I still think it's access to care, improving the scheduling, reducing wait times, and really making sure that the VA can either get people in in a timely manner or offer them to the community and get them seen in a timely manner, especially on the mental health side,” he said.
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