As serial revelations about the VA’s cover-up of long delays for veterans in need of medical treatment continue to gush from the 24-hour news pipeline, we are being forced to face the same sort of bureaucratic sclerosis that confronted Gen. Omar N. Bradley at the end of World War II.

Bradley was one of the greatest battlefield commanders of the war. He fought in the North Africa and Sicily campaigns, led U.S. ground forces in the D-Day invasion, and eventually commanded four field armies, totaling 1.3 million troops, in the Allied drive to recapture Nazi-occupied France and invade Germany. Dubbed the “GI’s general” by war correspondent Ernie Pyle for his unassuming manner and concern for his men, he was immortalized by actor Karl Malden in the 1970 hit movie “Patton.”

On Aug. 15, 1945, the day after war’s end, Bradley accepted the thankless job of administrator of the VA. During his first eight months in office, the population of veterans skyrocketed from almost 5 million to nearly 17 million as demobilization proceeded at break-neck pace. This overnight explosion of vets seeking everything from housing, schooling and life insurance to medical care created daunting problems, which the VA’s understaffed, hidebound and overly politicized bureaucracy was ill-equipped to handle.

In his 1983 book, titled A General’s Life, Bradley wrote, “The most urgent challenge we faced at VA was that of drastically upgrading the quality of VA medicine.” He described the state of that medicine as “mediocre” and said the VA suffered “from a critical shortage of doctors and hospitals.”

Bradley totally revamped the VA health system.

He decentralized the agency’s bureaucracy, creating 13 branch offices around the country. He removed VA doctors from the Civil Service system, built 70 new VA hospitals where they were needed (instead of where pork-barrel congressmen wanted them), affiliated the agency with class-A medical schools, appointed an outside medical advisory board, and shifted emphasis from warehousing to rehabilitating veterans.

In a little over two years under Bradley, the VA treated nearly 900,000 hospital patients and provided medical care and services to 6 million vets with less severe problems through direct payments to private physicians.

As we have learned from its recent highly publicized failures, the VA faces challenges of similar magnitude today.

According to its website, the VA operates the country’s largest integrated health care system, with over 1,700 hospitals, clinics, counseling centers and other facilities. (By comparison, the largest nonprofit hospital network, Ascension Health, has 77 hospitals).

The total number of patients the VA treats each year has risen from 4.2 to 6.6 million since 2001, largely the result of over a decade of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. And tens of thousands of vets have returned from war zones suffering from severe physical and mental health problems.

Not only is the system swamped with patients, it’s a huge bureaucracy, many of whose administrators have lost sight of their mission. Just when a clear recognition of shortcomings and decisive reform is needed, the VA’s leadership appears to be in denial, at best, and cover-up mode, at worst.

As late as June 20, testifying before a congressional committee, agency officials defended the fact that nearly 80 percent of the VA’s senior managers received bonuses, totaling $2.7 million, in fiscal year 2013 and none got less than a fully satisfactory rating. Really?

Last Monday, the head of the agency responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers advised President Obama that the VA’s Office of Medical Inspector has routinely denied that confirmed problems brought to its attention by VA employees have had any impact on patient care.

On Tuesday, CNN broadcast its interview of a Phoenix VA scheduling clerk who charged that files of dead patients were being altered in an ongoing attempt to hide the number of veterans who have died awaiting care at that facility. Also on Tuesday, retiring U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn issued a report estimating that over 1,000 veterans have died in the past decade because of delayed or poor care as opposed to the 23 deaths admitted by the V.A.

Any health care system as big and sprawling as the VA, public or private, would have to devote substantial time and energy to coordinating and overseeing its operations. But the decentralization pioneered by General Bradley has meant the VA has had to choose between dispatching a large cadre of executives to regularly visit each site or rely on computerized metrics to track the performance of its components from Washington.

It has chosen the latter course but has failed to execute properly.

By using bonuses incentivizing its local supervisors to meet metric goals, such as getting every vet an appointment within 14 days of request, while failing to provide adequate medical personnel to achieve that goal, VA headquarters in Washington unwittingly encouraged supervisors to “cook the books” — by keeping the names of a growing list of veterans waiting for care out of the central computer tracking system.

Incentives are useful, indeed indispensable, to good performance in both the public and private sector. Decentralization is necessary in large organizations to foster innovation and reduce bureaucracy. And metrics are helpful in setting and measuring quantifiable performance targets.

But unless incentives, decentralization and metrics are carefully designed and monitored, these tools can lead to fraud and poor performance, exactly the opposite of what they were intended to achieve.

A meaningful overhaul is unlikely to come from within the VA. What is needed is an outside figure of great stature, integrity and ability to clean house.

Someone, for instance, like Omar Bradley.

Elliott L. Epstein, a local attorney, is the founder of Museum L-A and author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He is taking a leave from the Rearview Mirror during his campaign for Androscoggin County Judge of Probate and may be reached at [email protected].