Officer says care is good

Nearly 3,000 Iraq war veterans are receiving care in the Cleveland and Butler, Pa., VA regions.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Veterans Affairs health-care facilities in Northeast Ohio are doing a good job of caring for veterans, including the recent surge of active-duty, Reserve and National Guard personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But, that is not the case overall for the VA, said John P. Brown, national vice chairman of AMVETS.
It is not that the VA does not want to do a good job. It is a case of not having enough money, said Brown, of Youngstown.
On the heels of newspaper stories about poor care and accommodations for wounded military personnel and their families in the Department of Defense's Walter Reed Hospital, and about a veteran who committed suicide because he couldn't get treatment for post traumatic stress disorder at a VA clinic, AMVETS called for an investigation of and better funding for military and VA health-care facilities.
The DOD's military health-care system and the VA are separate entities.
AMVETS is a veterans organization that represents all branches of the military, including Guard and Reserve units.
Where centers are located
Veterans in Northeast Ohio are served by the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, which consists of Wade Park Hospital in Cleveland; the Brecksville Division, a long-term nursing and mental health facility; and 12 outpatient clinics. There is no DOD military health-care facility in the Cleveland VA region.
In this area, outpatient clinics are in Youngstown, Warren and East Liverpool.
"Our goal is to have an outpatient clinic within 30 miles or 30 minutes of every veteran," said Chuck Bonacci, acting chief of external affairs for the Cleveland VA.
Bonacci said some 2,300 veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are receiving care in the Cleveland VA region. In Youngstown, that number is about 150, Bonacci said.
He said at this point the VA resources are not being overwhelmed by the influx of veterans.
In fact, Bonacci said the VA has an aggressive outreach program, partnering with Guard and Reserve units, to contact veterans of those units and enroll them in the VA.
Likewise, Sue McElhone, a licensed social worker at the Butler, Pa., VA Medical Center, said the numbers of military personnel enrolling in the VA for medical treatment has increased every year. McElhone, the contact person at the Butler VA for military personnel returning from OEF and OIF, said she documented 55 in fiscal year 2004, 132 in fiscal year 2005, 198 in fiscal year 2006, and 163 in the first 41/2 months of fiscal year 2007.
Because of the influx of OEF and OIF veterans, her job has changed from being primarily a social worker to being a contact person.
Enrollment urged
Bonacci and McElhone both noted that all returning military personnel, wounded or not, should enroll in VA because they are eligible for two years of free medical care.
While the VA and DOD military health-care facilities are separate, they do cooperate in trying to achieve a "seamless transition of care" for veterans when they are moved from the DOD to the VA, Bonacci said.
Moving veterans from military hospitals to VA facilities is a good idea because it gets them closer to their homes and families, Brown said.
The problem, he said, is that the VA does not receive additional money to care for those veterans. "I personally believe the DOD should send dollars to the VA to cover those expenses," he said.
In the past few years, Brown said, the VA budget has been 1 billion to 2 billion a year short, and the gap may be as much as 4 billion in the 2008 budget, due largely to underestimating the cost for caring for wounded service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We need to establish a VA budgeting system that more accurately accounts for the health-care needs of all our veterans, including our newest," Brown said.
Review sought
Thomas C. McGriff, the AMVETS national commander, has called for an emergency review of conditions at all military hospitals to determine whether what has been happening at Walter Reed is an isolated incident or a systemic problem.
Responding to criticism of the VA system, McElhone said there have been several recent surveys that say patient satisfaction at the VA is very high. Also, Bonacci said, the VA's computerized medical records system, which he said is the most extensive in the health-care industry, was recognized with the 2006 Innovations in American Government Award by Harvard University's JFK School of Government.
alcorn@vindy.com