Hampton Roads Case Study

State and federal legislators both need to make it a priority to be involved in the welfare of veterans. The issues will never get better unless the individuals in charge of the laws, regulations, funding and departments step up to the challenges. That alone will not even be enough. These issues need to be addressed on a state level as well. Housing projects and professional training need to be made more widely available. Understanding the importance of both changes made at a state and federal level for the living conditions and health status of American veterans is the first step. The next step is that it must be acted on and improved. The United States of America owes that much to its

Hampton Roads is a community with constant churn. Military personnel and their families are stationed here for short and long term periods of time. The following is just a short list of statistics regarding this area. According to the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce (2014):

They claimed Iraq and Afghanistan veteran polls have been taken, it shows that whatever improvements and actions being were taken were not enough. Fifty-nine percent of the people rated the job the government was doing to help was good, while fifty-six percent rated it as them doing poorly. In an article by CNN news nineteen veterans have died because of delays for medical treatments from the Veterans Affair. Those nineteen veterans were only a small proportion of that group. A number of eight-two veterans who have died because of delays for medical treatments like colonoscopies or endoscopies. Some people like my father (Jason McLain), who is a retired veteran, believes that some doctors have their own personal bias toward veterans. Jason McLain stated, “When I go to the VA they do not help me as soon as I need their help. Although when I go to any other civilian doctor’s office they help me right away with any of their help”. A website by the name of Free Grants Community stated that success and failures of the Departments of Veterans Affair are frequently the subjects of political promises and debates. There are many places that can help with benefits or homelessness, simply anything veteran(active/retired) need. A six-year veteran stated that there are places to help but emphasizes that you have to pursue yourself. After you are done with the military to go back to school and to keep getting educated. Besides the fact the regular ordinary citizens complain that veterans are not getting enough help, there have been complaints against all employers for discrimination has blames the economic crisis and ballooning deficits for the inability to provide for more

The main research questions in this study are: 1) is veteran healthcare equal to private healthcare; 2) do veterans have to wait longer for treatment options; and 3) do veterans have limited treatment options? It is hypothesized that veterans receive inferior healthcare services compared to private healthcare and the community is unaware of the disparities.

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) has been tasked with providing support and benefits to Veterans after they have completed their service. However, many Veterans are reporting difficulty accessing care due to systematic barriers within the VA’s Veterans Health Administration (Oliver, 2007). Complex eligibility requirements, long wait lists and lack of providers are a few of the issues Veterans are faced with when trying to access health and mental health care. Additionally, studies indicate that veterans, predominantly those from the recent wars in Iran and Iraq, have disproportionately high amounts of mental illness (Shim & Rust, 2013). These same veterans are experiencing difficulty accessing mental health care due to issues around a backlog of healthcare eligibility applications and a shortage of mental health providers through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which operates the Nation’s largest, integrated health care delivery system (APA, 2014). In 2014, at the request of the Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) evaluated the merit of the allegations of mismanagement at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) and the Health Eligibility Center (HEC).

In the past few years there has been increasing discussion about how to provide adequate care for the increasing number of veterasn who are eligible for care through the Veterans’ healthcare administration (VHA). There are concerns is that the VHA is not providing the level of access, efficiency, and quality of care that veterans expect. Lee & Begley, (2016) suggest access to care for the veteran population may be resulting in poor health outcomes. In response to these concerns, the Veterans ' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act (VACAA) of 2014, also known as the Veterans Choice Act, was created to improve Veterans’ healthcare. The VACAA proposed to do this by expanding the number of options veterans have for receiving healthcare, by providing access for healthcare at non-VA care centers as well as providing for an increase in staffing at VA facilities (U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016).

According to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, there are more than 1,500 locations to receive treatment and care across the country, which divides up to approximately 30 locations per state. The lack of locations may limit some veterans from receiving the care they desire. “Veterans who utilize VA services have worse health status that the general population” (Nelson, Taylor, Lurie, Escarce, McFarland, & Finn, 2011). This implies that the services offered are not sufficient enough to meet the needs of veterans. According to Jack Downing, President and CEO of Soldier On, “Seventy percent of veterans drive twenty-five miles or more to a VA facility.” These facts prove that we need more access for veterans so that they can get the

Current funding for veteran healthcare care is low and insufficient because of the large number of veterans, who are being discharged from the military as the country transitions to a democratic President. According to Dr. Rachel Nardin in her article about veteran healthcare, “Soldiers get excellent acute care when injured on active duty, but as revelations of poor conditions for soldiers receiving ongoing outpatient care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center highlighted, service members often have trouble getting the care they need once active duty ends” (Nardin 1)

The problem that the numerous senators are having with The Department of Veterans Affairs is that since November 2014 has only authorized 30,000 patients or 0.37 percent out of 8.5 million cardholders to receive non VA care. This is due they believe to the VHA being too strict on their eligibility criteria “We need to make it easier, not more difficult, for veterans to get the care they need and earned, regardless of whether they live in a rural area or a big city. I am going to continue to press the VA to ensure that this happens,” Toomey, R-Lehigh Valley.

The Veterans Affair has always claimed to take pride in their timeliness care. What they were not offering was the truth about how they were getting these numbers. They were changing the dates on paper work and falsely recording in the database. The patient’s charts were altered in order to lessen the effect of their conditions, along with performing useless procedures to make the time seem more favorable. Schedulers were pressured into using unofficial waitlist and other inaccurate paper work in justifying these wait times. It has been proven that the extended waiting periods have led to many deaths within the Veterans Affairs care system. An incident surrounding the wait was when “Thomas Breen, a 71-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, With a history of bladder cancer, Breen called his Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix for a follow-up appointment. He had to wait months to receive treatment. In the meantime, his family took him to a private hospital where he was diagnosed with bladder cancer”(Hankel,1). Thomas Breen had passed away before ever hearing back from his Veterans Affairs hospital. This story is important in understanding that the wait times for the Veterans Affair program are causing deaths in our Veteran population. This story allows one to understand how long the wait times could be for this care, but the question aroused from this is what is allowing the Veterans

Almost 60% of all veterans say that the VA is doing “only fair” or a “poor” job at taking care of the problems faced by serviceman (Chandrasekaren). Current soldiers, as well as veterans, are facing problems like not be able to find a job because of a disability or not receiving compensation for an injury that occurred while in the service. Many wait months upon months just to be seen by a doctor. The men and women protecting this country deserve the best help available, and they are receiving very little or no help at all. Health care, benefits, and simply having money to survive are not problems that these individuals need to be facing after putting their lives on the line for us. Veterans need help, and our

Every day at the Veterans Affair Hospital, veterans are being sent away with little to no treatment. Or when they do receive treatment, it is using archaic and outdated techniques. The patients are not being treated fully, so they are forced to return at a later time with the same ailment. In a recent article, it outlined that some people were removed from the treatment list and later died from conditions that could have been treated. There was, also, a misappropriation of funds shown in the article. The hospital spent $10 million dollars on a MRI machine It was shown on the VA website that if a veteran wanted to see a primary care physician that average wait time was 10.15 days, however in a different article it was shown that scheduling clerks

The VA is not doing well financially, due to the fact many services not available at the Hampton VA. On a daily basis, veterans are being referred out to neurosurgery, orthopedics, pregnancy, positive troponin, to a higher level for care. Most of this veterans are not service connected, and the department of VA affairs does not turn away veterans because of no service connections.

In sum, the Veteran population growth from the last 15 years has swelled to astronomical numbers that the VA has not seen since WWII. The resources needed to take care of this population is going to take millions to set right and the fact that there is dishonesty in the claims that some veterans receive is disconcerting but social worker helping this population should never let up in helping to veterans receiving their legal rights to that benefit given to them by law.

On a daily basis, thousands of Soldiers are seen at appointments varying anywhere from surgery on better eye sight to putting a broken foot into a cast for 6 weeks to heal. Appointments can be located anywhere on or off post depending on the type of appointment or preference of the Soldier. It is every Soldier’s right to choose where they would like to receive health care services. The Army spends Billions of dollars on medical supplies, medications, the latest and newest high tech equipment, and the healthcare facilities and the healthcare providers. When a Soldier misses an appointment, the Army’s money is then wasted. Money that could have been used on something such as new trucks, weapons and equipment. With budget cuts on funds within the ranks, missing an appointment is money the Army could use elsewhere.