DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A new review from the Department of Veterans Affairs confirms what Channel 2 Action News first reported in 2023, that thousands of mental health calls to the Atlanta VA Medical Center went unanswered.
But in an exclusive interview with Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray, Atlanta VA Medical Center Director Kai Mentzer said the Atlanta VA has already taken steps to improve and fix the problems laid out in an Inspector General’s report.
“That was absolutely unacceptable. It was 30% of the calls not being answered at that time. And that’s completely unacceptable and not where we are today,” Mentzer told Gray.
In 2023, Channel 2 Action News obtained a copy of the tip to the Inspector General’s whistleblower hotline that started this review.
The whistleblower warned that a total of 7,188 mental health calls to the Atlanta VA have gone unanswered, writing, “We are at a critical staff level and cannot answer the phones but it’s being said the phones are broken.”
In its report issued this week, The Inspector General “substantiated the complainant’s allegations that the call center did not meet VHA abandonment rate and timeliness standards because it did not have enough staff during the review period. The call center’s inability to meet these standards meant callers did not consistently receive timely assistance and access to appointments for needed care.”
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In its own review, the Inspector General studied three months of phone calls and found that the call center only answered about 94,400 of 135,600 calls. That’s a 30% call abandonment rate.
Mentzer said that each day his senior staff now reviews the phone call data, and they have made major progress. He said for the past several months the call abandonment rate has been under 5%.
“This morning, the numbers showed that we were answering the telephones within 12 seconds,” Mentzer said.
The Inspector General found it was not just mental health calls going unanswered. When the Atlanta VA staff first prioritized fixing the mental health call response, it did so at the expense of answering other health calls.
“It’s disappointing to me that it’s possible for a patient to call here in a crisis, in a need, and for us not to be able to provide that care for them. And since the report was initially provided, there are a number of things that we’ve done to improve here,” Mentzer said.
Those changes continue in February when the Atlanta VA intends to move staff who have been answering phone calls offsite into its hospitals and clinics full-time.
“First and foremost, our veterans deserve face-to-face contact. They want to see somebody. And so, we want to make sure that we have that person there for them to answer questions,” said Kendra Lee, Atlanta VA Medical Center’s Assistant Director of Access.
Lee said those employees will now be working in person with veteran patients in between phone calls.
“Hopefully, that will reduce the number of calls that we have. But for the calls that we still have, it will be answered on site,” Lee said.
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