{"id":61917,"date":"2015-09-20T12:33:02","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61917"},"modified":"2015-09-20T12:33:02","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:33:02","slug":"vas-brac-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61917","title":{"rendered":"VA’s BRAC plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Stars & Stripes<\/a>, last year Congress asked this CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare<\/a> organization to evaluate the VA Healthcare system and they recommend that the VA “realign” their assets – read that: close some of their facilities.<\/p>\n

Congress should create a governance board to guide the new VA strategy. The board could also reshape the agency\u2019s geographic footprint, moving or closing hospitals to better serve veteran health care needs, similar to the Base Realignment and Closure process, it said.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers and the VA must also decide the agency\u2019s place in the modern era of health care. The 16 members of the review panel wrote a letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald \u2014 included in the review package \u2014 suggesting that the agency consider scaling back care to \u201cfocus on specific areas of service-related conditions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that’s just brilliant. The VA went through a “realignment” process several years ago which closed a lot of facilities and moved the healthcare facilities further from most veterans. That last “realignment” is the reason that the VA has to build new hospitals because that “realignment” realigned service to veterans right out of the picture.<\/p>\n

Last year, Congress and the White House initiated the Veterans’ Choice Program, plowed millions of dollars into the process to help veterans get treatment “on the economy” so to speak, if the lived too far from VA facilities to get responsive treatment in a timely manner. Weeks after sending out the literature and Vet Choice cards to veterans, the White House declared the program broken and raided the funds.<\/p>\n

The CMS Alliance (MITRE Corporation) looked at the problem from a business stand point, so you know that they won’t suggest “realignment” in a way that will benefit veterans. Veterans’ Choice was a simple, common sense solution to the problem, that’s why the White House raped it to fund other things.<\/p>\n

The problem with the VA isn’t geography, the facilities or money – the problem is the culture among the non-medical personnel that stand between veterans and the folks who want to treat them. This discussion about “realignment” is a distraction from the real problem.<\/p>\n

Here’s my experience with the problem; I have lost the use of my feet, so I needed hand controls on a vehicle in order to drive. The VA offered to install those hand controls. That’s fine. But I needed training in order to drive a vehicle with hand controls. The VA’s only driving instructor for the hand controls was in DC (a five-hour round trip) and they wanted me to make the drive there for eight weeks. <\/p>\n

An alternative solution was that I pay for my training out of my pocket for a private instructor that was closer. I found one in Winchester, Virginia (less than an hour away) – so that’s what I did, for four weeks. I drove tractors when I was younger and a number of military vehicles, so the transition wasn’t all that difficult for me. Much less difficult than driving five hours a day for eight weeks. But, the drivers’ training had been “realigned” right out of the Martinsburg, West Virginia VA hospital recently. I could afford to spend the $1200 out-of-pocket expenses, not reimbursable by the VA, by the way, for private driver training, but I’m sure that many elderly veterans can’t. I’m sure there are many who also can’t make the long trip to DC for the training, either. And who wants to take drivers’ training in the Metro DC area anyway?<\/p>\n

But this makes my point about this whole BRAC idea.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Richard for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Stars & Stripes, last year Congress asked this CMS Alliance to Modernize Healthcare organization … VA’s BRAC plan<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61917","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=61917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}