In this April 2, 2015, file photo, a visitor leaves the Sacramento Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Rancho Cordova, Calif.  (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

Since the scandal over the coverup of long patient wait times broke two years ago, Department of Veterans Affairs officials have touted a reorganization dubbed “MyVA” as the road to excellence.

Earlier this year, a department news release called the 2014 changes “the most significant culture and process change at VA in decades, with the primary goals of putting Veterans first and becoming the top customer service organization in government.”

But for those changes to work, VA needs to evaluate and implement them.

That’s a problem.

The Veterans Health Administration, the section that runs VA’s health system, “does not have a process that ensures recommended organizational structure changes are evaluated,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

The GAO found cases in which VHA’s responses to recommendations “were incomplete, not documented, or not timely.” The lagging effort conflicts with federal standards requiring agencies to fix problems on “a timely basis.”

This comes as no surprise to House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who has led a dogged congressional probe into the department.

“This report documents an approach that has become commonplace at VA, in which the department announces initiatives with great fanfare and expends tremendous amounts of time and resources to achieve them, while failing in implementation due to a complete lack of oversight and accountability,” he complained in an email to The Washington Post.

He accused VA Secretary Bob McDonald of pursuing the MyVA organizational restructuring “with no intent of evaluating its outcomes and impact on agency performance.” He called that “baffling.”

In its response to the GAO, the VA said the department is working to reorganize “for success, guided by ideas and initiatives from Veterans, employees, and all of four stakeholders.”

Caring for about 7 million veterans in 168 hospitals and more than 1,000 outpatient facilities, VHA runs the nation’s largest health-care system and has a $51 billion budget. Although veterans have complained about long waits for service, they also have praised the care once they get it.

But how much better would that be if VHA followed recommendations for improvement?

The GAO cited an unnamed senior official on a governance task force who said that Undersecretary of Health David Shulkin “did not approve 13 of the 21 recommendations, so they would not be implemented.” Furthermore, his decisions were not documented because “they were communicated verbally.”