DRAFT DRAFT Staff Study Report DRAFT DRAFT
PROBLEM
Military veterans with service connected illnesses/injuries have trouble accessing Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals and clinics due to the distance, time and expense of travel
FACTORS BEARING UPON THE PROBLEM
- The Department of Defense (DOD) reports that approximately 40% of enlistees come from small towns and rural areas. After military service many will likely return to those same home towns far away from large VA hospitals or even VA community based outreach clinics.
- There have been many cases of disabled vets returning home, not receiving the care they needed then subsequently meeting unfortunate ends including homelessness, family violence, depression, legal and marital problems and even suicide.
- The involvement of family members is well known to increase the effectiveness of treatment; the greater the distance from healthcare the greater the barrier to family involvement
- The VA wants to be the health care system of choice for all vets but reports unacceptably low rates of enrollment in the VA health care system.
- Focus groups of veterans identify distance from VA facilities as a prime reason that vets don’t enroll in the VA for their healthcare
- In this recessionary climate state budgets are facing severe shortfalls and even the federally funded VA healthcare system cannot reasonably be expected to have VA healthcare within range of every veteran.
- While DOD and VA are making progress in sharing healthcare information leading to reductions in backlogs of disability claims access to a continuum of follow-up care is still lacking for many poor, rural, disabled vets
- Making healthcare equally accessible to veterans regardless of where they live should be something all Americans can support regardless of political affiliation
- The cost to reimburse the provision of health care by local providers would logically be less than building and staffing more VA facilities in rural areas
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ACTION RECOMMENDED
Congress must pass legislation that ensures veterans with service connected disabilities have the same access to health care through local providers that they would otherwise receive at a VA facility. The DOD and VA should be tasked by law to establish minimal levels of training and certification for healthcare providers before they are eligible for government reimbursement for their services to disabled vets.
- - The mechanism for reimbursement might be as simple as extending the existing Tri Care contract to cover services delivered to vets with service connected disabilities
1/26/2011
C:\Documents and Settings\Al Brewster\My Documents\Staff Study Report on Veterans Healthcare.doc