Thank you for speaking to us today, Secretary.  I particularly appreciate your view of veterans as clients and not just customers.  Businesses tend to invest more in their relationships with clients than they do with customers.  This is exactly what we need – a personal relationship between the VA and its clients – our veterans.

I also appreciate your focus on people, results, and forward thinking, as well as measuring success by timeliness, quality, and consistency.  It’s good to note that quantity is nowhere in that measure.  Though it is certainly important to decrease our backlog of claims – which is definitely something that needs to be addressed quickly and decisively – the number of claims processed is not an appropriate measure of success.  The number of claims correctly and accurately processed is.  We all know you’re a man of action, so we look forward to your progress.

That being said, I have three topics I’d like to hear your initial thoughts on:

1. What is your sense of the current benefits backlog?
2. What are your initial thoughts on addressing rural veterans’ access to care and the status of implementing the pilot program passed by Congress late last year intended to allow highly rural vets to receive care outside a VA facility?
3. The VA Clinic at Fort Bliss’ Beaumont medical Center is a great prototype for combined VA / Military medical program.  With Fort Bliss building a new medical center, is the VA in any talks with DoD about taking over the current Beaumont Medical Center facility and expand VA’s services in that area?  Obviously this would be a great help to those veterans in the West Texas and Southern New Mexico area.

Thank you.  I look forward to a visit from you to Audie Murphy in San Antonio and the VA Clinic at the Beaumont Medical Center at Fort Bliss.  I hope you will be able to visit very soon.