Vets’ Health Needs Grow
Jul 11th, 2007 by Oscar
Vets’ Health Needs Grow
The News and Observer
Feb. 28, 2005
The Department of Veterans Affairs is expanding clinics in Raleigh and Charlotte and wants to build nine new ones to accommodate a boom in North Carolina’s population of veterans and to put doctors closer to where the veterans live.
North Carolina’s population of military retirees is 780,000 — up about 100,000 since 1980, according to state officials. An expected wave of combat veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would add to it.
But the federal government did not provide money for three new North Carolina clinics that the VA wanted in the current budget, and it’s unclear when — or whether — those clinics or the other six proposed for construction by 2012 will be built. President Bush’s recently proposed 2006 budget isn’t likely to help much, veterans advocates say.
“If Congress goes along with the administration’s budget, there are veterans who are getting treatment now who will be pushed out,” said Charles F. Smith, who heads the state Division of Veterans Affairs. His division helps veterans get their federal benefits.
Officials of the American Legion, a veterans association, testified to the U.S. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that the proposed budget was a disaster for veterans and that the portion earmarked for medical care needed to be $2.4 billion greater. They also have accused the administration of trying to drive more than a million veterans out of the system by requiring higher prescription co-payments in some cases and a $250 enrollment fee for some veterans.
Long wait for care
The VA is the federal government’s largest civilian department, with nearly a quarter-million workers. The VA also administers service-related disability benefits and oversees VA cemeteries. Mainly, though, it’s known for its nationwide medical care system, one of the world’s largest.
The processes for getting health care and disability benefits can be so complex that several organizations help veterans with claims, including the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans and the state Division of Veterans Affairs.
In North Carolina, the VA health-care system serves retired troops at four hospitals and eight outpatient clinics. In the years after World War II, the VA system gained notoriety for poor care. That changed, but waiting lists became the signature problem. In the past few years, the VA has whittled those down, but they’re not gone. More than 300,000 veterans nationwide remain on various waiting lists for treatment and benefits.
Smith and other veterans advocates say that it can still take several months after an initial application to begin receiving VA care. “Most vets, they’re getting to within two to four months,” he said. “I know of some who have waited six months, but a couple of years ago it was worse — as long as 12 months.”
Bucking national trend
As age catches up with veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the number of U.S. veterans has been shrinking. North Carolina, though, with a veteran population bolstered by two of the nation’s largest military bases, has bucked the trend. Many of the state’s veterans are in age groups that use more health care. About two-thirds of all men in the state over 65 are veterans.
North Carolina VA officials say their agency has done a good job — given the money available — of handling the growing number of veterans here by shifting cash from other states where the veteran populations have shrunk, and by building the new clinics and retooling older facilities.
Soldiers from the 30th Heavy Separate Brigade, North Carolina’s National Guard unit that returned recently from Iraq, seem to be getting good service from the VA, said Staff Sgt. Christopher Mooring, 32, of Four Oaks. He is about to ask the VA to evaluate an injury to his leg suffered in a traffic accident in Iraq and some hearing loss, apparently from gunfire.
Mooring, a full-time Guard soldier at the Smithfield armory, said that within three days of returning from Iraq, brigade soldiers were briefed by VA counselors on what was available to them, and another VA representative is scheduled to visit the armory this summer. The soldiers in his company who have sought VA care — mostly for post-traumatic stress disorder — were seen quickly.
“I was really surprised,” he said. “It’s not like the horror stories you hear from other wars.”
Still, VA care isn’t instant for all veterans. For new enrollees at primary-care clinics in North Carolina, the current wait to be seen averages 51 days, said Jurita Barber, a VA spokeswoman in Washington. For existing patients, the typical wait is about 7 days.
More patients at Bragg
The area around Fort Bragg is an obvious pressure point for the VA. In 1999, the 66-year-old VA hospital in Fayetteville served about 20,000 patients, said Janet Stout, the hospital’s director. By this fall, it and the two smaller VA clinics that have opened in its service area will have twice that many.
The hospital has about 350,000 square feet and was built in 1939, primarily for inpatient care, she said. “We have been reconfiguring it, and the space is being reconfigured mainly for primary care. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn’t. But considering the tremendous growth, I think we’ve kept up pretty well.”
According to VA projections, in 10 years Fayetteville will need an additional 195,000 to 200,000 square feet of VA medical facilities.
The VA has been bracing for freshly-minted veterans from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the hundreds of thousands of troops who have served in those two conflicts haven’t retired yet, though. More than 10,000 soldiers from Bragg have served in those wars, but the Fayetteville VA hospital is treating only about 340.
Expanding clinics
Fayetteville isn’t the only place where demand for VA health care is growing. At the Raleigh clinic on Sunnybrook Road, 4,600 people are enrolled. Full capacity once it’s expanded will be more than 14,000, which is a target that should be reached by 2012, said Pam Howell, a spokeswoman in the VA’s Mid-Atlantic regional office in Durham.
The clinic in Raleigh will triple in size this year, and next year Charlotte’s will grow, she said.
The VA also is opening a mental health center in Durham, one of just 10 nationwide, that will concentrate on veterans coming off active duty. The fresh combat veterans could make it a busy place: According to research published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine, up to 17 percent of combat forces returning from Iraq and 11 percent coming back from Afghanistan had problems with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or substance abuse.
Smith said that he’s hearing tales of soaring demand at VA facilities around the state, and that he hopes the federal government boosts the VA budget to meet it.
“These are people who need care and who have served their country honorably, and they should get it,” he said, “but without more money, some are going to be turned away.”