Noteboom The Law Firm

Fayetteville VA Center Employees Charged with being Rude, Hostile

April 6, 2010 - The reputation of the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center has been seriously damaged due to customer complaints. Because of the severity and sheer volume of the complaints, the center has must hire 150 new employees in order to turn the reputation of the center around.

The complaints against the Fayetteville VA focused on:

• Hostile work environments;
• Rude caregivers; and
• Ignoring patients.

 A full-time director for the VA center is being sought and he or she will be personally appointed by Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki. The main issues facing the center beside the rudeness of the employees is the limited parking and the terrible telephone system.

Employees needed to be held accountable for their actions. As a result, the interim director put a zero tolerance, anti-rudeness policy in place. Employees being rude were reported by name. The result ranged from being written up to being fired. Since this policy has taken place, incidents of rude behavior have dropped severely.  

The VA will be hiring 150 people, approximately 50 of which will be nurses. The remaining new hires will answer phones and schedule appointments. The VA's phone system is underequipped to handle the amount of calls the center receives. On top of that, there were not enough people to answer the calls the center could handle. The result was incredible frustration on the part of the veterans, the patients, and the VA.

As an additional aid, two 10,000 sq. ft. primary clinics will soon be opened to alleviate some of the pressure of the center. These new clinics will not help with the employee issues, however as the center's problems usually dealt with customer service.

So far the temporary fixes seem to be helping, but the turnover at the clinic is still somewhat high. Who ever takes the permanent director position will inherit a long history of problems at that particular clinic and an uphill battle in fixing those issues.