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PANEL WEIGHS CONCERNS ABOUT RURAL VETS' ACCESS
TO CARE -- Dominating the hearing were stories
of rural
veterans spending entire days routinely
traveling
hundreds of miles to the briefest of
appointments.
Story here...
http://public.cq.com/
docs/hb/hbnews110-000002498989.html
Story below:
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Panel Weighs Concerns About Rural Vets’ Access
to Care
By John Reichard, CQ HealthBeat Editor
A House panel Thursday began sifting through a variety of bills to
improve medical care for veterans, with access to treatment in rural
areas among the top concerns addressed by the stack of proposals.
Dominating the hearing by the House Veterans’ Affairs Health
Subcommittee were stories of rural veterans spending entire days
routinely traveling hundreds of miles to the briefest of appointments,
but veterans’ groups voiced ambivalence about how lawmakers would
address the problem.
The subcommittee listened to more than half a dozen House members pitch
their bills for improving veterans’ care, a number of which call for
increased contracting by the Veterans Health Administration at the
Department of Veterans Affairs with local providers to treat veterans
who live in areas distant from VA facilities.
But some veterans’ lobbyists expressed fear that broader contracting to
provide more timely and convenient treatment would undermine the VA’s
system for directly providing care itself through its own hospitals and
clinics.
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., made a pitch for her bill (HR 92) that
would set standards for timely access to care. Veterans would have to be
able to get appointments for primary care from the VA hospitals or
clinics within 30 days. In certain instances, if the VA were unable to
live up to that standard, it would have to contract for care with
private providers.
Although the VA claims that almost all of its facilities comply with the
30-day standard 90 percent or more of the time, but Brown-Waite said
many veterans wait much longer than that. “I guess it’s in dog years
that they are counting it, because it’s not human days,” she said.
Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas, said that young veterans in his south
Texas district face complex medical needs, yet the closest VA hospital
is many hours away. A veteran spends five-and-a-half hours to get to the
nearest VA hospital to get a 15-minute checkup and then has to spend
another five-and-a-half hours getting back home, he said.
“Now we are beginning to see wounds that we have not seen before,” Ortiz
said of the injuries sustained by U.S. solders from explosive devices in
Iraq. Yet the federal government continues its longtime resistance to
building a VA facility in his district, he said. “Young men went and
fought a war thinking we were going to take care of their problems,” he
said. The government can find money to fight a war, he said, “but for
some reason we can’t find the money to keep the promises that we made”
to care for them if they are injured or sick.
Ortiz is urging passage of a bill (HR 538) that would establish an
in-patient VA facility in his district to serve the more than 100,000
veterans living there.
Overall, the VA has made much progress in providing more timely care,
said Dennis M. Cullinan, legislative director of the Veterans of Foreign
Wars. “A few years ago, there were over 300,000 veterans throughout the
country who were waiting six months or more for primary health care, but
VA has made great strides to reduce this and most initial appointments
are being made” within 30 days, he said.
Cullinan said contracting for care in certain geographic where this is
not the case raised concerns about what it would cost.“While it would
greatly benefit veterans in areas with long waiting times, we must be
mindful of it not eating into the health care budget for other
locations.”
Adrian Atizado, legislative director of the Disabled American Veterans
(DAV), expressed similar concerns about contracting. “The DAV is opposed
to any initiative that would turn VA into a primary insurer rather than
a provider of health care to veterans,” he said.
Rep. Michael H. Michaud, D-Maine, chairman of the subcommittee, was
noncommittal about the bills, saying the hearing was just the first of
many his panel would hold to consider legislation.
But Michaud also outlined some of his own thinking on the rural access
issue, noting that he has prepared a draft proposal for discussion
purposes that would establish mobile clinics to provide care in rural
areas, create a special advisory committee on rural veterans to improve
access to care and also create “centers of excellence” to carry out
research on improving rural access to care.
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Larry Scott --
