All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
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I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today Chris Colley.
He is the CEO of the VA Detroit Medical Center and recently appointed this year.
And he's got a lot of great background we're going to talk about and some new ideas
and just helps shed some light on the John Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit.
Director Colley, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Well, hello, Jeff.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be able to get the exciting news out what the Detroit VA is bringing these days.
Well, let's set this up first by, I'll explain a little bit, but then I'm going to ask you to add to it.
Director Colley did his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois.
He obtained a master's in healthcare administration.
He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
You've been with VA for 24 or 25 years.
You've had various leadership roles and headed up different medical centers.
Round out your background a little bit.
This is clearly a passion of yours.
It's your professional career.
Tell us what puts you in a great spot to be the CEO of the VA Detroit Medical Center.
All right.
Well, I'll tell you my story coming into the VA.
Right, graduated from the University of Illinois.
I've got a degree in kinesiology.
I had plans to become an athletic trainer for the Chicago Bears.
Yes, I said it.
I am very impressed with the Lions, by the way, and am following them.
But I had plans to do that.
When I graduated, waiting on the next semester to come around in the fall to get my master's degree in physical therapy,
I went back home and there was an article in the newspaper that the local VA was hiring kinesiotherapists.
And I said, what?
Don't know what that is, but I have a degree in it.
I'm not doing anything this summer.
I'll go check that out.
So I started at the VA in Danville, Illinois as a student trainee kinesiotherapist.
And just figured I'm just biding my time for the summer.
And I really enjoyed working with the veterans.
But I will tell you, one particular day, I was working with a veteran and he had a speech impediment.
I couldn't understand what he was saying.
He was permanently in a wheelchair.
He kept using his motions with his hands like he was chopping at his knees.
I didn't know what that was.
And I asked the nurses later, I said, hey, what's this guy's story?
Why does he keep doing that?
Does he have pain in his knees?
Something I need to know.
And they said, well, no, he's a baton death march survivor.
Oh, boy.
I'll tell you, Jim, it stopped me in my tracks.
Maybe I was naive, Midwest kid.
And I read about baton death march.
And I went back and did a little research and studied it.
And I tell you, my respect just went through the roof.
And I said, how am I, what honor do I have of treating this guy who went through so much?
And they talked about, right, so he's chopping at his knees because his knees were broken
as he was on that march.
And he survived.
And I just said, wow, I get it, want to be an athletic trainer for Chicago Bears.
OK, but holy cow, this mission is cool.
And I know you said, yeah, I had a 25 years service, actually 28.
That was 28 years ago.
Wow.
Never left the VA.
I am not a veteran.
I didn't serve.
And that's when I said, this is how I'm going to serve.
This is how I'm going to serve my country.
I'm going to serve the veterans.
And I've been with it ever since.
And it is an absolute passion and honor to do that.
Well, you've certainly, yeah, if you risen through the ranks and before your current
stop at a CEO in Detroit, you were the executive director of the Lita Lutz VA Medical Center
in Saginaw, Michigan.
Again, a long, a long way from being a summer intern.
And it is right.
So coming out of being a summer intern and just knowing I wanted to do more for the veterans,
there were some legislations and laws that were being passed back in the day that I whole
hardly agreed with.
But I'm just going to be honest with you, I didn't feel that leadership was doing it
correctly.
I just had this inkling, yes, this naive kid out of Illinois that I felt that I could
do a little bit better.
And so that was my goal is to get in some type of leadership.
And I did not have a goal of being the CEO of a hospital at the time, but I wanted to
get into some type of supervisory and really start charging folks with, this is the mission,
this is servant leadership, this is how you get back.
So just over time, yes, I took different jobs as a patient education coordinator, chief
of prosthetics at Mountain Home, Tennessee, and then moved up to Michigan and went to
Ann Arbor back in 2009 as the executive assistant to the associate director, the COO.
And that's when I really got a taste for the C-suite, what the executive leaders can do,
what impact they have done only in the facility but on the veterans directly.
And that's what I really said, now this is really what I want to do.
So from there, right, I advanced my degree, became a fellow in the American College of
Healthcare Executives, went through a lot of leadership development trainings and was
given the opportunity to be the COO of the Ann Arbor VA and really enjoyed it.
And then from there, yeah, I became the CEO at the Saginaw VA Medical Center.
Now Saginaw is in our market.
It's in our Michigan market.
Saginaw is a level three complexity.
Low, they don't have any inpatient beds other than a nursing home.
But what really kept tugging at me was Ann Arbor though is a 1B facility.
It's a very complex facility and I missed that.
So when given the opportunity to take over Detroit, which is a 1C complexity, and that's
just, man, that's just Nicola and Dimes away from being a 1B facility, I really jumped
at that chance.
Now, being in Michigan since 2009, working with Detroit always felt that Detroit just
had felt like they had more offer.
And I really felt that, you know, if given the opportunity, I think this facility can
excel.
And I tell you, Jim, since I've been here, that's what I've seen.
The folks here are so eager.
They're anxious.
They're ready to go.
I mean, kind of easy for me.
I don't want to say that too much, but really just letting loose of the reins, the employees
here, they get it.
They get the mission.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the Detroit VA Medical Center.
It's number of employees, number of beds.
Give folks some sense in this around the country.
Give them some sense of what goes on at the Detroit VA Medical Center.
And we're talking to Chris Cawley, who's the CEO of that center, appointed this year.
And honestly, he's appointed because, you know, there were some challenges at the Detroit
Center.
So, but tell, give us that sense of what's there at the complex.
Yeah, absolutely.
You're right, Jim, there were some challenges.
And we're going to be digging out of that.
Already started a lot of things.
But the Detroit VA, like I said, is a level one C facility.
So what that means to the veterans, high complexity, full tertiary facility.
So we have, you know, a full emergency department.
We have full surgery capacity.
We have a lot of specialties that the lower level facilities don't have, such as the Battle
Creek and the Saginaw.
So we offer everything just about the only thing we're missing right now is cardiology.
And we're working on that to add cardiology, which will increase our complexity rating.
We have about 150 beds ranging in med surge to CLC, which is the community living center
that's our nursing home.
We have that on site as well.
We have ICU, step down units.
We have an inpatient mental health ward that has 25 beds.
Now I really want to stress that this state as a whole really is missing inpatient mental
health.
It doesn't matter where you go and it doesn't need necessarily for veterans.
I'm just saying the state as a whole is lacking inpatient health.
When we have just increased, we were at 19 inpatient mental health beds.
We have just increased to 25.
And that's been very helpful for other facilities, Saginaw and Battle Creek, who refer veterans
over here for those services.
And how many employees work at the Detroit Medical Center?
Yeah, we've got just over 2,300.
And Jim, I'm going to tell you though, one year ago today, we were sitting probably at
about, I don't know, 1900.
Well that's been one of the challenges, right?
You got to have appropriate staffing to do all this.
And it's at 2,300, what sort of goal?
What do you need to get to to say, okay, I'm fully staffed.
I can move to the next level?
Absolutely.
Well, I think we are, right?
So I think that was the goal of 2,300.
Wasn't something we just pulled out of thin air.
This was a number that we looked across all services and said, what is it that you need
to, one, improve quality, improve access for the veterans who want wait times to decrease?
What is it that you need to run your service appropriately?
And that was a number that we shot at and we've reached that.
And we're really starting to see a turn.
Primary care, for instance, I will tell you, admittedly, our wait times in primary care
are not that good.
But boy, have we improved over the last couple of months.
Just last month, we hired seven new primary care physicians.
In one month, they came on board.
That's huge.
Yeah, that is.
Well, that's just one area.
One of the things I wanted to talk about, because a lot of people don't realize this,
let's talk about the academic affiliations that Detroit Medical Center has, because really
all around the country, these big VA medical centers are generally associated or originally
located and associated with that academic thought in mind.
So tell us about the affiliations you have.
Yeah.
So yeah, that is historically what one of the VA stands on.
We're a learning organization and legislation was passed, I mean, it could have been 80
years ago, for that matter, that we provide residency for new physicians.
Our academic affiliate is Wayne State University.
So every year, we have a rotation of residents that come in, year one as they're going through
their studies, they graduate to fellows, and they get all their training here on site.
They rotate through different disciplines.
And yeah, you're right, across the country, I don't know that I have the exact number,
very large percent of physicians across this country at one point in time, walk through
a VA medical center as part of their training.
Yeah, I don't remember the number exactly either, but it's something astounding, like
80% of all physicians have done some training at the VA, and that's good on all fronts.
And that's also true with some nursing programs.
I don't know if you're affiliated with any nursing programs.
I don't recall that we have nursing programs affiliations, but I will tell you that what
we do here is try to grow our own, whether it be RN, transition to practice, that we're
going to be starting.
So these are RNs that come out of school that don't have any experience.
However, we will hire them on as an RN, but they take a year to go through a transitional
phase.
They're mentored, they get on the job training, they have somebody a proctor with them the
whole time.
And after one year, they're fully ready to become an RN on their own, but we did that
within our own house, so we screwed through it our own if you will.
And the point of that is, and I guess I want you to talk a little bit about this, all of
this, whether it's hiring new folks or training up nurses to maybe be the full RN or being
affiliated with an academic, the goal of all that is patient care and outcomes, isn't
it?
Well, yeah, let's cut to the chase, right?
That is it, absolutely.
We need to provide the highest quality of care for veterans and not only high quality,
it's got to be timely, and it's got to be what they need.
Now, I'll tell you that the Mission Act came out and said, look, a couple of things, right?
If the VA does not provide the service that you need, we'll send you to the community.
If you live 30 minutes away from primary care, we'll send you to the community.
If you're 60 minutes away from specialty care, we'll send you to the community.
I am absolutely fine with sending the veteran wherever they need the care.
I prefer they get the care in the VA, and that's why we're adding all of these staff
so that we can improve quality.
We can improve weight times.
When we talk about distance that you have to drive, let me speak to this real quick.
We have, currently, we have two outpatient clinics.
We have one in Pontiac and we have one in Yale.
That's not cutting it, Jim.
We need to get out there, right?
I'm just going to ask you, Jim, if you lived in South Lion or something of that nature,
and you had to go to your primary care provider just to get your blood pressure taken, and
you got to fight this Detroit traffic, come all the way down here just to get your blood
pressure taken and withdrawn, that's old days.
We can't do that anymore.
It's just a disincentive.
It's a disincentive, and I agree with you, the outpatient clinics, and there seems to
be some of this is Congress, right?
Congress has got to fund these things.
They have to fund them, yes.
And then you've got to.
But we also have to plan strategically.
And so I am excited to say at the early 2024, we're opening an outpatient clinic in Trenton,
in the downriver area.
We are very excited about that.
That's going to have primary care, mental health, and lab services.
And that's just to get started.
That's just to at least create a presence down there while we lease some space.
And then on the backside, we're going to be looking to build a new outpatient clinic and
actually stand alone that belongs to us.
We're doing that.
We just had a meeting two weeks ago with Selfridge Air National Guard Base, creating
a presence on site there as well.
We're looking in Macomb County, Oakland County, and Port Huron.
So Yale is too far away from Port Huron.
The mission, it's 40 minutes away, and you're already missing those veterans.
So we're going to move that closer.
So getting to bringing care closer to where the veterans are, and that's our goal.
We need to grow, and that's what we're going to do.
We've really, our number of veterans, we call them Uniques, a unique veteran, a unique
social security number, if you will, has been declining over the last couple of years.
And partly because we have not been flexible, this facility has not been flexible to get
out there in the community, one, to recruit them.
Two, you said it, there has been some negative news coming out of the Detroit VA, but we're
here to fix it, right?
And getting out there, providing that high quality care.
Number one, if I had to get a message across to veterans, I'm just asking, hey, give us
a chance.
If you've been here before and you said, give us another chance, I will tell you things
have changed, guaranteed.
Well, and we all know in every organization, it starts at the top, and they've brought
you in with your set of experiences to push that change, to be a change agent.
So these are all good things to hear about.
And it really is about delivering the services the veterans need for their care.
You mentioned some specialties.
There are areas where your DACs and healthcare teams are really kind of especially or unique
in serving veterans.
And that's why there's a lot of talk about community and care.
But I've also talked to a lot of researchers who say the private sector doesn't understand
military veteran issues.
That's why we have the VA system.
So talk to us about some of the specialties that you have in Detroit that you're just
not going to find these kind of experiences maybe with other physician groups.
Oh, that's a good point.
So one, let's talk about mental health real quick, right?
So our mental health staff, our psychologists, psychiatrists, they have been trained in veterans,
not disabilities, but the needs of what veterans need.
Yeah, they're health issues.
Yep.
Health issues, that's right.
And the public sector has not been.
And so we strive a lot on whether it be PTSD, whether it be other mental health issues, we
really stand far and above the community in that.
So I would just say if you're a veteran and need a mental health, you may want to try
the VA first.
They get it.
They know it.
They've seen it all.
And I'm chances are they will be able to help you.
So that's the big one.
Other specialties, surgery, for instance, we have really grown our surgery department
here.
I've got a new chief of surgery, Dr. John Paisley.
What?
This guy is a breath of fresh air.
He's exciting.
The staff really look up to him.
He's got a vision that's really going to take our surgery department to the next level.
The one, for instance, is plastics and hands, and we talk about orthopedics.
We actually give referrals from the Ann Arbor VA.
So we do go back and forth.
We send some referrals over there for some surgeries.
They send folks over here for specifically plastics and hands.
And that's very, very exciting that we're able to share our specialties like that.
Well, and that's what you want.
You want the best care for the veteran at whichever hospital is best equipped for that.
And we don't want to duplicate services because money is not unlimited in the VA system.
You've got to work and cooperate together.
It's great to hear that you guys are.
And one of the things that a lot of veterans have is sleep apnea or sleep problems.
Is there any work that's being done there or any specially work that's being done at
the Detroit VA Medical Center?
Chris Colley, director, give us some insight and what's going on in that area.
Well, as a matter of fact, we have a very large research department and there's a lot
of research going on specifically for sleep apnea.
Now our new chief of research, Dr. Chaudhry, she was our chief of sleep.
And she's got a lot of research background.
She's doing a lot of research on Gulf War veterans and sleep apnea in that arena.
Very, very impressed at what she's brought forward and what she brings to the table,
not only in the research department, it's not only going to help the Detroit VA, it's
going to help every VA across the country what they're doing.
So our sleep department though, in general, they get it.
We talk to them, so they know what Gulf War veterans went through, what other veterans
in other areas went through.
And so they can specifically tune in to what their needs are.
Okay, I'm going to ask you the hard questions now.
Everybody's listening going, hey, wait a minute, Jim, you're not, you're not hitting Chris
with the stuff that people want to want to know about.
Hit me both of them.
That's right.
What are the top three or four issues that you're working on?
Because there were challenges that had to be overcome.
And that's why you're there.
So what are those top issues that you're working on?
Let me put it this way, Jim.
I'm going to tell you a little story.
And I share this with, anytime I get in front of veterans, you got a favorite restaurant
you go to, I assume.
Absolutely.
You go there and you get a steak every time it's perfect.
And you go there one time and the steak is not that great.
And you figure, well, you know what, the chef's having a bad date.
That's okay.
It's my favorite place to go.
But you go back the next time the steak still isn't all that great.
And well, the customer service wasn't all that great either.
So unfortunately, you just got to say, you know what, just something's happened here.
I'm not sure what it is.
I'm not going back.
So one day, Jim, you see a sign on the wall says under new management.
What does that tell you?
Well, hopefully my steak will be better.
Right, right, right, right.
It tells me that, you know what, somebody recognized something and a change has to be
made.
And that's what's happening here.
So some of the things that we're working on, I will tell you, one of the issues right off
the bat is customer service.
So when I walked in the door the first day I was here, I talked about the all employees
survey.
What does that mean?
Right?
People looking at me like, are you kidding me?
You're the new CEO.
You know, we've got all these issues going on.
You want to talk about a survey of the employees?
Yes, I do, because I want to know where the employees feel about working at the Detroit
VA.
What are the issues here?
Because we're not going to make change unless I know what the issues are.
And so there's been a big resounding feedback from the employees.
They let their voices be known.
And that was great because in the past that was not allowed.
They were not psychologically safe.
They could not speak up.
There's fear of reprisal.
That's changing.
Now people are raising their hand and going, hey, look, I don't think this is right.
Look, I think this may harm the veteran.
And I think in the past that was shyed away from.
Well, now we're getting folks who are saying, look, if you don't change or if this happens,
it's going to harm the veteran.
These are called close calls.
We're having more close calls than we're having adverse events.
So we're actually catching them ahead of time because people are raising their hands.
So that psychological safety, that was a big issue.
I talked about customer service.
We really need to improve in that area.
I'll be honest with you.
So there were places where you would go and the person would, it was almost like you were
bothering them when you walked up to the counter and we've done a lot in that area.
Lot of folks have responded also and we've seen improvements in that area.
And then I talked about just that one, just overall, our decrease in veterans and we really
need to increase it.
This is how we get our funding.
I do want to say for the veterans who are out there who are saying, hey, you know what,
I don't need it.
Give it to the veterans who deserve it.
Well, the reality is it's already paid for.
It's already there.
But if we don't get your service, we don't bring you in.
That's a unique, remember I talked about, that goes in through the big calculation in the
sky, which is how we get our funding.
So I will tell you, you may not qualify for healthcare being paid by the VA.
You still get your care here.
If you have Blue Cross Blue Shield and maybe you're not service connected and you don't
fall into one of those categories, you still get your care here just like any other hospital.
Well, just charge your insurance company just like anybody else would.
Go ahead and get that now.
You may not think you need it now, but it'd be nice if you were already in the system,
somewhere to happen.
You're already in the system.
That's what we tell everybody.
We tell everybody that we get involved at Veterans Radio and at my full-time job.
Go register.
You may not qualify for healthcare by VA at the moment.
You may feel you don't need it.
But get in the system because life changes, events change.
You lose a job.
You lose an insurance package, whatever it might be.
But get in the system.
So registration, getting registered is a big deal and that helps as you're talking about
making sure you've got enough Veteran units to justify continuing the programs.
Yeah.
I will say if you have an opportunity, go on Hospital Compare.
It's a website.
This is the first time that the VA has been allowed to participate.
So what this does, it's comparing all the hospitals in the community and you look up
any biting, gives them a rating like a hotel star rating.
The Detroit VA is a four-star facility.
The four-star facility, I want to put that out there and I'm not going to say what everybody
else is.
Go ahead and do your own comparison.
We do have a goal to become a five-star and we already know the areas that we're lacking
to keep us from a five-star.
But being a four-star, it's pretty cool.
I'm telling you.
And getting to a four-star bus.
Right.
Getting that mentality across to people that, hey, don't run down our reputation.
We're a four-star and we're moving to five and the employees are moving to five.
That's the kind of culture change you're trying to drive, I think.
Definitely correct.
Okay.
You talked customer service.
You talked getting enough people through the doors and expanding the service territory.
Any other issues that you go, yep, we're working on this.
I want to dispel any rumor about this right now.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
So, well, there was a big OIG, Office of Inspector General, that came through last year and then
the final report came out.
And yeah, it smeared some ugly on us.
But I will tell you, if you read the report, the final report, what it says, our response
to them is that, you know, it says, we'll be compliant in January 2024.
That standard templated response that you have to give.
We've already replied and responded to every one of those issues.
They've all been corrected.
Reason we can't say they're compliant right now is we have to show sustainment.
We got to show that six months worth of, you said you were going to do this.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you are.
You're doing it and so that's fine.
We have challenged everybody to step up, meet that challenge.
I will tell you when the OIG report came out, I did not hide it, Jim.
I didn't put it under my desk.
I didn't sit on it, put it under a carpet.
I sent it out to every employee.
And we put it on our Facebook page because I want everybody to know we're not hiding
behind this.
We're transparent.
This is the truth.
This is what happened.
But it's not what's happening today.
And it's not what's going to happen in the future, guaranteed.
Well, that's why we have you on.
That's why we have on the CEO of the VA Detroit Medical Center, the John Dingell Medical Center
because we want all of our veterans to get the top care and, you know, it hurts all
of us when we say, oh man, they're not living up to that expectation.
We want to hear from leadership that they're heading in this direction and they're getting
the job done.
And Chris Collier, I really appreciate you taking some extra time to talk to Veterans
Radio today to get these messages out.
And we'll be back.
We'll talk to you some more in the future to see how the progress has gone and give
you a chance in a forum to talk to the larger veteran population in the area.
Yeah, let's do that.
Next time I'll give you an update on the Fisher House.
We just broke ground last week and I'm super excited about that.
Well, we are Veterans Radio big supporters of Kate and the Fisher House team and have
them on regularly.
So we've been following the progress and so that's going to be a great addition for the
Detroit Medical Center to have that Fisher House nearby.
Chris, thanks for the time today.
Really do appreciate it.
You bet, have a great day.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
That's veteransradio.org.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for
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They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-6934800.
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We appreciate all your support.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
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