ATLANTA — A whistleblower at the Atlanta VA Medical Center who was demoted and disciplined has been given his job back.
But that whistleblower said he is still looking for answers from the VA on the issue that led him to speak up more than a year ago.
“They wanted to keep me silent,” Gregory Kendall said after signing a settlement agreement that formally reinstates him and even includes a monetary settlement.
In 2023, a tip from another whistleblower revealed to the VA Inspector General that a total of 7,188 mental health calls to the Atlanta VA had “gone unanswered.”
In the whistleblower report, a VA employee warned the unanswered calls were due to not having enough people answering the phone writing in the complaint, “We are at a critical staff level and cannot answer the phones but it’s being said the phones are broken.”
Kendall said he believed Atlanta VA leadership was trying to cover up the problem from the public and Congress.
That’s why he said he contacted a Congressional briefing on the unanswered mental health phone calls.