A local San Diego veterinarian recently informed me about an issue that veterinarians across the country are having with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) accreditation process.
Accreditation by the USDA is required for any veterinarian wishing to issue health certificates for animals traveling between states or out of the country. In the past, once a vet was accredited, they were set for life. However, in an effort to reform their system, the USDA is now requiring that every veterinarian who has been accredited in the past to reapply. The problem is that because the USDA asked 100,000+ veterinarians to do the same thing at the same time, they are now overwhelmed with the task. Practitioners who submitted applications months ago still have not even received an acknowledgment that their documentation was received.
In response to the delay, the USDA posted a statement on their website indicating that they do not expect to complete processing until March 2011.
A similar “unanticipated” government backlog occurred in 2007, when the State Department was caught off guard after a new law that required citizens to have a passport when traveling to Mexico, Canada, or the Carribean went into effect. The change in policy created a huge increase in demand for passports during the busy summer travel season. Because the government did not hire additional employees to process the additional applications, the department could not supply passports fast enough and countless American travelers were left grounded.
Yet another instance of inefficiency also occurred in 2007. That time officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that they were drastically raising all visa, green card, and Naturalization application fees. In order to avoid the higher fees, immigrants and their families simultaneously sent in millions of applications, and the USCIS saw their workload increase by approximately 650% in one month alone. Because the USCIS was completely unprepared for this surge, processing times went from seven to eighteen months and many lawful immigrants were left out of status.
In all of these examples, the overseeing agency knew for months (sometimes years) that they would be imposing a new regulation which would require additional manpower, yet it did not occur to any of them to staff up. To me this indicates that the federal government’s inability to anticipate easily foreseeable problems is the norm, not a trend. And in a post-health-care-reform-being-passed-world, this norm is troublesome.
Whether we agree with it or not – health care reform is the law of the land. This is our reality. Unless/until it is repealed, we need to move beyond protest rallies and incorporate dialogue that demands true accountability and readiness from our representatives in Washington. In essence, lets just do the opposite of what the federal government would do and start planning for the worst.
Comments 5
A “local veterinarian” aka your sister? Tell her to quit her whining and get certified like she should!!
Jaime:
Did you read the post?
“…the USDA asked 100,000+ veterinarians to do the same thing at the same time, they are now overwhelmed with the task. Practitioners who submitted applications months ago still have not even received an acknowledgment that their documentation was received.”
Apparently, you did not. Or, perhaps you are a bureaucrat with the USDA.
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