{"id":60656,"date":"2015-07-01T10:16:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T14:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60656"},"modified":"2015-07-01T13:47:54","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T17:47:54","slug":"va-to-vet-were-not-taking-new-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60656","title":{"rendered":"VA to vet: We’re not taking new patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Military Times<\/a> tells the story of Iraq war veteran Chris Dorsey who sought to find treatment for his PTS symptoms and went from one unresponsive clinic to another in Oakwood, Georgia. He was told by the receptionist that “We’re not accepting any new patients \u2014 not this clinic.” You know, that’s a perfectly good response, given the number of veterans who are going into the system these days. What’s not acceptable is that is the end of the conversation. The receptionist should have taken the time to at least explain to Dorsey what his options are in regards to VA programs available. But that didn’t happen. A really good receptionist would have pulled him off to the side and helped him find someone who could help.<\/p>\n

The VA last year introduced a program \u2014 VA Choice \u2014 that would allow Dorsey to see a civilian therapist, but until he spoke with a fellow veteran at a nearby veterans’ outreach group about his recent experiences at the two clinics, he’d never heard of VA Choice.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

“We have some very serious geographical issues. Now we have the VA Choice card but we have doctors who won’t accept it or don’t understand it,” [Jerry Edwards who founded the non-profit North Georgia Veteran’s Outreach Center] said.<\/p>\n

By its own admission, VA has had problems implementing VA Choice, which began last November. As of May, it had authorized appointments for roughly 50,000 veterans but had received more than a half million inquiries about the program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet, the Obama Administration wants to pull the plug on Veterans’ Choice because it is under utilized by veterans – a determination that was made just a few days after I received my VA Choice card. They just wanted to go through the motions and not really provide any meaningful service.<\/p>\n

To my larger point; the changes that need to be made at the VA isn’t among the people who actually provide the healthcare for veterans, It’s the administrators that stand between the veterans and their care that need to be booted, or at a minimum, trained to provide services instead of making excuses why they won’t do their jobs. I’m reasonably sure that the receptionist isn’t even aware of the Vets’ Choice program or how it works. In the article, Dorsey admits that he didn’t know about the program, so, I wonder why it’s under-utilized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Military Times tells the story of Iraq war veteran Chris Dorsey who sought to find … VA to vet: We’re not taking new patients<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60656","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}