Despite management background, VA nominee faces even bigger challenge now

Robert McDonald, the VA secretary nominee, is facing a huge bureaucracy with more than 300,000 employees. Elsewhere, a new poll finds most veterans say getting care at VA hospitals is "very" or "somewhat" difficult.

The Washington Post: Robert McDonald, Obama's VA Nominee, Faced Own Challenges At Procter & Gamble
Robert A. McDonald's last big challenge was to push a proud, slow-moving and sometimes bureaucratic company to change. He resigned under pressure as chief executive of Procter & Gamble amid criticism from investors and former executives that he wasn't moving fast enough. Now McDonald is President Obama's choice to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. His new job: Push a proud, but battered, slow-moving bureaucracy to change (Jaffe and Mufson, 7/1).

The Associated Press: New VA Secretary Nominee Not A Health Care Expert
Veterans groups worry that the longtime corporate executive, nominated by President Barack Obama to lead the VA, may have trouble adjusting to a far-flung bureaucracy of more than 300,000 employees, where hundreds of hospital directors and other career executives wield great power far from the agency's Washington headquarters. "Procter & Gamble is going to feel like a Ferrari compared to the VA," said Paul Rieckhoff, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (Daly, 7/2).

The Washington Post: Poll: Most Veterans Say Getting Access To VA Care Is Difficult
More than half of American veterans say it is "very" or "somewhat" difficult to get access to health care through a Department of Veterans Affairs facility, according to a new Gallup poll released Tuesday (Sullivan, 7/1).

Politico: Veterans Poll: Most Say VA 'Difficult''A majority of veterans say they find it difficult to access medical care through the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a new poll from Gallup. Asked to rate their opinion of the VA's medical care, 55 percent of veterans polled said it was either "very difficult" or "somewhat difficult" to access services made available by the embattled federal department. Thirty percent of respondents said they find it very or somewhat easy to access VA care, and 14 percent had no opinion (Sneed, 7/1).

NPR: VA Offers Doctor's Appointment To Man Who Died In 2012
Nearly two years after her husband died, a Massachusetts woman received a letter saying that a Veterans Affairs hospital was ready to see him. Suzanne Chase's husband, Doug, was a Vietnam veteran who died of a brain tumor; the agency is apologizing over the mistake (Chappell, 7/1).