Veterans should be able to receive mental health care as a benefit through the Veterans Health Administration. Sadly, that’s not always the case, as AHCJ member and frequent Military.com contributor Patricia Kime discovered.
Her recent investigative story, “Canceled Appointments, Unexplained Mixups — Veterans Facing Challenges Getting VA Mental Health Care,” revealed that the cancellation rate for in-person and telehealth mental health appointments across VA facilities averaged 10.6% from 2020-2023, and at some facilities reached 21%. Kime spent about a year reporting her story, including interviewing more than a dozen veterans and current and former VA employees about their experiences. The work, supported by the Pulitzer Center, was part of a series covering the effects of the PACT Act, legislation that expanded health care benefits from the VA for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances.
In this “How I Did It,” Kime spoke with AHCJ about her efforts and shared her advice for balancing longer investigations with daily news stories.
Responses have been lightly edited for brevity.
How did this story come about?
One of my colleagues, Drew Lawrence, had gotten a tip from a person who worked for the VA who said, “Hey, there are some issues going on here. There aren’t a whole bunch of referrals going out, and there’s a lot of cancellations.” Drew talked to me about it. I went back through my emails and saw there were a few people who had written me in the last couple of years to discuss cancellations, so I reached out to some of them to see if there was any pattern. We also did some crowdsourcing. Drew posted a message on Reddit’s r/Veterans site saying if you have an issue with mental health care appointments being canceled, direct message me, to see if there were trends. That was the nugget behind it.
How did you find veterans to interview?
We started with the people who responded to us on Reddit. We interviewed them and got them to furnish proof that they had made appointments that had gotten cancelled. A reporter I know at another publication gave me one source he interviewed but couldn’t use. I also contacted two sources from a story in ProPublica that focused on problems at one VA clinic, to ask specifically about cancellations.
Then, I really needed data. One group that had been complaining about wait times for a long time is Concerned Veterans for America. They had filed a FOIA lawsuit to get data, which they shared with me. I had that as a foundation, but it was old and about cancellations that largely covered the beginning of the pandemic. We filed our own FOIA to try to get updated data. That’s where we really ran into trouble, because the VA changed their databases and how they kept that information. They had created the cancellation information just for CVA. Because [newer cancellations] weren’t data that already was generated, that didn’t fall under FOIA law. Finally, just as I was about to write the final product, the VA public affairs office gave me everything I wanted. I also read Office of Inspector General reports on veterans and suicides, to see if any were related to cancelled appointments, which is how I found a lawyer to interview.
What was important to you in telling this story?
Roughly 17 veterans a day die by suicide. The VA prides itself on saying, “come to the VA to get your mental health care, we want you.” But I’ve covered this long enough that I hear concerns from veterans saying the VA wants them to go to group therapy, and they want individualized therapy. They’re working really hard, but it’s not a perfect system. Giving a voice to veterans has always been my philosophy. I started covering military health care in 2011 and I am a military spouse. I feel very passionate about exposing things that perhaps need solutions and need to be addressed.
Has this story spurred any changes?
On Nov. 7, a bipartisan group of 13 lawmakers led by Reps. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) sent a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough to express their concern about veterans’ access to mental health resources, basically saying it was unacceptable, and asking the department to provide information within 30 days on how they will address the problem. (Kime covered this in a follow-up article). I didn’t know about this until a Congressional staffer reached out to me and asked where the data in my story came from. I got a lot of email, and I potentially have a follow-up story idea from a whistleblower who read the article.
Any advice to AHCJ members on pursuing longer investigations?
The hardest thing is always time management. I didn’t really have that pressing a deadline because I was waiting for the FOIA. But make sure to carve out chunks of time to do big projects. I get distracted by daily news, and I’m in a situation where I have to cover daily news. But I have always found it extremely valuable to do the daily stories, because I get feedback that leads to the bigger projects. I often get a lot of tips out of just having covered this topic for a really long time and being a name in the veterans reporter space. It’s valuable to be active, even if it’s just reposting an article you find interesting, on social media. Getting known as a person who covers certain subjects garners you more tips and more sources.
