{"id":52873,"date":"2014-07-02T08:10:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T12:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=52873"},"modified":"2014-07-02T08:10:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T12:10:06","slug":"a-slightly-late-appointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=52873","title":{"rendered":"A Slightly Late Appointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Doug Chase was a Vietnam vet.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in 2011 he became seriously ill.<\/p>\n<p>He lived in the greater Boston metro area.\u00a0 Originally, he was being seen by doctors\u00a0 in Boston.\u00a0 But the Bedford VAMC was closer, so he tried to move his care to that facility.<\/p>\n<p>That request was made in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks ago, Chase got a notice from the VA telling him he could schedule an appointment with a primary care physician.\u00a0 There was just one problem.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boston.cbslocal.com\/2014\/06\/30\/iteam-acton-vet-finally-gets-va-doctors-appointment-2-years-after-he-died\/2\/\">Chase had died in August 2012<\/a> &#8211; nearly two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>It gets even better.\u00a0 When Chase died, his wife applied for VA funeral benefits.\u00a0 The application was denied &#8211; according to his wife, <em>because he&#8217;d never been treated at a VA hospital<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s more info at the link.\u00a0 It&#8217;s worth reading &#8211; unless you&#8217;re having blood pressure or anger-management issues today.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a resource problem at the VA, folks.\u00a0 And it&#8217;s not a medical problem, either.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a priorities, culture, and management problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doug Chase was a Vietnam vet.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in 2011 he became seriously ill. He lived in &hellip; <a title=\"A Slightly Late Appointment\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=52873\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Slightly Late Appointment<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,86,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}