Feeley back to run VA facilities - Sacramento Business Journal:

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William Feeley takes the post of medical center director for the beginningJune 21, overseeing the hospitals in Buffalo and Batavia and sevenh community-based clinics. Since 2006, he has servef at the federal level as undersecretary for healthj operationsand management. It is in this role that he has faceds criticism over the past year in response to risingt suicide rates among soldiersand veterans. Feelet was singled out in a storyt published June 1 by ThePublic Record, an onliner media source published by the nonprofit Internationalp Humanities Center. The story highlighted a backlog of nearl 1 million unfinished disability claimesfrom veterans.
The story cited the VA’s inabilityg to implement components of its Mental Health Strategic Plan which was designed to provide rapird services for veterans who show signs of suicide or who suffeffrom post-traumatic stress disorder. Feeley was blastefd for failing toprovide oversight, as well as for failing to implemenft elements of the strategic plan, when he ran the Upstate VA He previously was criticized by suicide experts durinv a lawsuit challenging the VA’s mentap health system. A story published in the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2008quoted Feeley, who said in a pretria l deposition that the VA had no systematic national plan for suicide prevention.
who was not available by declinedvia e-mail to comment on the criticism but said he lookede forward to the new challenge: “Io have enjoyed the opportunity to servw VA on a national level for the past three years and welcome the opportunity to return and serve the veterans of Wester New York.” He is not new to the Feeley came to the area as associate directo r in 1994, rising to directorf of the system in 1998. In 2003, he became directof of the , where he oversawa medical centersin Albany, Bath, Batavia, Canandaigua and Syracuse, as well as 28 community-baseed outpatient clinics.