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MEMBERS OF HOUSE AND SENATE URGE VA TO MAINTAIN
SERVICES AT MONTROSE FACILITY -- VA Secretary
Nicholson
is expected to make decision before departing
office on Oct. 1.
Montrose, New York VA
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Story here...
http://www.thejournalnews.
com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200709
18/NEWS01/709180326/1020/NEWS04
Story below:
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Top local congressional officials urge VA to
maintain Montrose services
By SUSAN ELAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
The area's top congressional officials have sent a joint message to the
departing secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs urging him not
to move medical services off the VA campus in Montrose.
Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and Reps. John
Hall, D-Dover Plains, Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, and Eliot Engel, D-the
Bronx, expressed apprehension that a study used by the VA to determine
the future of Montrose did not adequately reflect the increasing number
of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and their probable
needs.
"The number of combat veterans is increasing," the letter to VA
Secretary James Nicholson said. "Advances in medical technology have
resulted in fewer deaths, but a much higher rate of service members
returning with serious injuries, both physical and psychological, that
will require lifelong care."
Nicholson has said he expects to decide on future services at the VA
Hudson Valley Healthcare System's FDR campus in Montrose before
departing by Oct. 1.
"He hopes to make a decision if there is sufficient information in the
final report," Larry Devine, a VA spokesman, said yesterday. "The report
is under review."
The report he referred to was prepared by a local advisory panel as part
of the VA's Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services, or CARES, a
nationwide assessment of health-care facilities begun by the VA in June
2002 that would involve leasing underused or vacant land to private
developers.
The members of Congress have asked Nicholson to consider a proposal by
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano and Cortlandt Supervisor Linda
Puglisi to create a veterans village with housing and some retail and
other services at Montrose.
The local advisory panel has recommended moving some medical and
psychiatric services from Montrose to the VA's Castle Point campus in
Fishkill. Local veterans who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and
the Gulf War have called the proposal a land grab that would free up
portions of the 189-acre Montrose campus with Hudson River views to
developers of luxury condominiums.
Panel Chairwoman Maryann Musumeci, director of the Bronx VA Medical
Center, said previously that veterans' access to primary care would not
be reduced by the CARES decision.
"Those services will continue to be provided at the Montrose campus
along with other specialty and mental outpatient services," she said.
"Westchester veterans will continue to have access to post-traumatic
stress disorder and other psycho-social programs at the Montrose
campus."
The recommendation includes a plan to transfer acute psychiatric,
long-term psychiatric and nursing home beds from Montrose to Castle
Point. Spinal-cord injury cases would go from Castle Point to the VA
hospital in the Bronx.
William Nazario, a Marine in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, said he moved
from the Bronx to Montrose in 1997 to be closer to the VA hospital where
he has received treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly
two decades.
"It was after the inpatient program that my life really started to
change for the better," said Nazario, who entered the 45-day program at
Montrose in 1997 and has attended regular PTSD group sessions there ever
since. "Montrose gave me the tools to live a better life."
Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun to turn up in
the PTSD sessions he attends, confronting many of the same troubles
Vietnam veterans have struggled with for decades, Nazario said.
Jimmy Johnson of Peekskill, an Army sergeant in Vietnam from 1967 to
1969, said the Montrose VA had proved a lifeline as he continued to
suffer from PTSD and depression. For continuing treatment of a gunshot
wound to his shoulder he sustained in Vietnam, Johnson must drive the 45
minutes to Castle Point.
"It's much harder for the average vet who lives in the area to get to
Castle Point, and some don't have cars," he said.
As for the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan he has met in PTSD groups at
Montrose, Johnson said: "They're going to need all the help they can
get. They're going to be a real mess for a long time."
Reach Susan Elan at selan@lohud.com
or 914-666-6205.
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Larry Scott --
