Hello, Is This The VA Hotline? Hello? Hello?
The VA’s problem-plagued suicide hotline, created in 2007 to deal with rising numbers of veterans threatening suicides, is in trouble. They have been dropping calls or transferring these desperate people to voicemail. In order to fix the problem the they have hired a guy who has a history of running other agency phone banks that…..have a poor record of service, dropping as many as one in five calls from veterans. Congrats to Matthew Eitutis on your new promotion and thank you to our government which fixes our problems with more problems.
Here’s a few facts from the article:
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.
-and also-
Gibson announced in February that he was shifting management of the crisis line from medical officials to a VA business office run by Eitutis, 46, a retired Air Force major who has master’s degrees in public health and human resources, and has worked eight years for the VA.
Flying high means working for HR. Go figure.