- Reaction score
- 94
- Points
- 530
Rick Goebel said:I really hate to come to the defence of bureaucrats, but I wonder how many accesses to the file were proper in terms of department procedure. In the course of a couple of relatively simple disputes I had with government departments, it certainly appeared that every phone conversation I had and every letter they sent involved a different employee. In a complex case with lots of contacts, I could certainly see a large number of people "needing" to access the file at one time or another. Does anyone know how many of these accesses to the file were even alleged to be "not required"?
We have to sign Access requests for even our OWN personal assigned pension advocate to access our medical records.
There is a systemic issue with VACs processess & policy when any one of them can then access a file without my, or my advocates, permission. If I only get one advocate, then their staffing of my file should then also be limited to an "assigned case worker(s) ONLY" and not every Tom, Dick & Harry in the department who may/may not receive a phone call or a letter on Day X. not your file? Then hand it over to the case worker to whom it IS assigned. There ... that was easy.
Social Services manages to assign case workers (although they are swamped) and those not assigned have no right, and no business, being in that not-assigned case record ... you'd think a Federal department full of Federal Employees with such an important and privacy-heightened task could do so as well. It is NOT rocket science.
There's no excuse for just "anyone" being able to access any soldiers file. They'll certainly make excuses, but that is far from "justifying" this lack of security and discretion with Veteran's confidential medical records.