Essay on Missed Appointment ART 86

In many cases, soldiers didn’t seek treatment in fear that their military careers would come to an end. Others were on waiting lists or were directed to the bottom of the list among treatment providers without getting consistent care, or seemed to slip under the radar completely.

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)

Article 92 of the uniform code of military justice is when a solider fails to obey an order or regulation given to them by an NCO, officer, or someone pointed above them in section or squad. Article 92 is perhaps the most important article in the entirety of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Any military member, whether in the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, or Coast Guard who fail to obey a lawful order of their superiors risk serious consequences. Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it a crime to disobey any lawful order. It lays down the ground law, the absolute line which may not be crossed. Everything else in the uniform code of military justice is explanation of the various forms that disobeying an order can

About 57,436 Veterans chose to use Non-VA (Department of Veterans Affairs) facilities for healthcare service while waiting more than 90 days for appointments with their VA clinicians (Couzner, Ratcliffe, & Crotty 2012). Since post-hospitalization follow-up with primary care providers has a great impact on theses Veterans’ health outcome by promoting recovery and preventing readmissions (Martinez, 2014). The Patient Aligned Care Teams track Veterans’ admission and discharge in VA facilities through the VA’s electronic medical record to ensure timely post-hospitalization with Veterans’ primary care providers. There are no data about post-hospitalization follow up among Veterans who is admitted into Non-VA facilities.

Men and women serve in the United States armed forces in hopes of receiving the promise of a dependable income and reliable benefits. The primary influence for those joining the armed forces is tuition reimbursement followed by health care benefits (Clever, & Segal, 2013). The majority of enlisted military only serve for seven years and often work in minimum wage jobs without health insurance after departing from the military. Before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, veterans could only utilize veteran hospitals and outpatient clinics for military related health problems (United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016). Once the Affordable Care Act was initiated, all veterans could utilize veteran medical services for any of their health care needs. The problem needing to be addressed is the number of veteran facilities available to provide treatment for the vast amount of veterans now qualified for medical services.

However as of more recent, the focus has been to cut spending and this in turn has affected most notably, Veterans Affairs (VA) and their health programs. According to the VA, “VA is charged with fulfilling President Lincoln’s promise to care for those “who shall have borne the battle, and for ” their families and their survivors. To support this mission, the 2016 Budget provides $70.2 billion in discretionary funding for VA, a 7.9 percent increase above the 2015 enacted level. In addition, the budget includes $3.2 billion in estimated medical care collections, for a total discretionary budget authority of $73.5 billion (which includes $3.2 billion in Medical Care Collections) and $95.3 billion for VA’s mandatory benefit programs.” This increase in budgetary spending can be deceiving as the VA is also seeing an increase in the amount of veterans claiming benefits. So although there is a budgetary increase, it is not enough (a deficit) to fulfill all claims made by veterans and/or their families and therefore is causing the VA to make cutbacks in both military construction efforts, but more importantly in medical benefits that veterans receive. For instance, improving veterans access to medical care to include strengthening their benefits program is a matter of priority. As has been recently of subject in the news, wait times for veterans has been extreme and inefficient, at times to the detriment of the health of veterans. Although the increase is aimed at providing more physicians and improving the VA’s “physical” infrastructure, the budgetary increase lacks the foresight to address the growing veteran population in concurrence with the needed changes that are being proposed. In an article published in Military Times on

Veterans who come back from serving overseas are coming home with injuries that they cannot afford to get treated. Even today there are a large number of veterans that have been out of the service for many decades that can 't afford their own health care or even provide new clothes and shelter for themselves. According to a research done by gathering information from Current Populations Surveys and the National Health Interview Survey from 1988 to 2005 they found that "Nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and not

Almost 55% of all veterans badly injured while in the service feel the government has not, Provided “all the help they think it should”. Veterans who are receiving poor medical service continue to Challenge the United states by making it difficult for service members and their families to locate the services needed for a successful transition from battlefield to home front. The United States Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Administration must make certain changes before a solution is insight. A few steps to resolve this health care issue would be to commence a new training program and adding to

Members of the United States military are subject to a special set of laws known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). There are many offenses contained in the UCMJ that criminalize conduct, that, while perhaps frowned upon by some, is completely legal for civilians. It is generally argued that these laws are necessary to preserve order and discipline among military members.

In May of last year, a fifty-one year old Veteran complained of chest pain during an examination, the VA doctor referred him for testing. Unfortunately a month later he died of heart disease and the test had never been scheduled. The test would have shown, the urgent need for medical attention, preventing his untimely death. This is just one of many cases, were the wait time for medical treatment has affected Veterans and their family negatively. The average time for a Veteran to see his primary care provider for the first time, when switching to the Veteran Affairs Healthcare system, is over ninety days. Since the DoD healthcare system uses different processing procedure, than the Veteran Affairs Healthcare system, many patients are unable to get continued healthcare. In many cases the review of the disability claims package takes too long. Even though the Inspector General of the VA has called for a fourteen day target time frame for scheduled appointments, there has been little improvement. During a recent probe it has come to light, that wait times are nationwide falsified. In order to meet the “performance targets”, various administrative techniques concealed the longer wait (Slack).

In 2014, Congress created the $10 billion Choice Plan, which allowed veterans to go to a private doctor if they lived more than 40 miles from a veterans hospital or could not get an appointment within 30 days. It spent another $5 billion to hire and train more health care workers. While the Choice Plan has been used by thousands of veterans, its rollout was plagued by billing delays, with the overall time veterans had to wait for care increasing”

The main problem is that some agencies within the Department of Veterans Affairs across the States have been rigging client schedules in an illegal fashion for different illicit, unprofessional purposes. One can only imagine the disorder that this practice causes. Not only does it wreak havoc on clients that are in need of a health care service but also provide, if not stopped, institutionalization of an illicit practice which in turn breaks down transparency and accountability. It is therefore important that policy-makers and the new heads of the Department act as quickly as possible in order to make critical short-term changes that will eventually make way for long-term goals. One major consequence of this problem is that supervisors were asking staff to alter the scheduling sheets in order to “meet” the fourteen day goal required to attend a veteran (Cohen, 2014). In other words, fourteen days is the appropriate span of time that the local agency has to call up a veteran to provide him/her with the suitable health service. Because of mounting pressures of trying to meet this goal the local agencies, seeing there were too many patients and impediments, made up unofficial lists of those patients they were going to make wait longer and only input those patients they knew could be called up within

My opinion here might be biased because I have served on active duty for nearly 8 years and I have had many encounters with military based healthcare. I am assuming by government funded programs in health care, the focus is on scholarships for healthcare students and repayment programs for healthcare professionals. I personally believe that encouraging future physicians, dentists, and other healthcare professionals to serve in military is necessary to combat the growing health demands of personnel in the military. It is important that the government relieve some of the financial burdens on students who decided to serve in the military, because the sacrifices they could face will go beyond the cost of their education. Across all branches of

The VA does not pay for all of those visits. The US Government is sending The Department of Veterans Affairs funding warnings and they are not paying attention to them. “The Veterans Health Administration who provides health care to about 8.8 million veterans a year, has ignored warning about its deficiencies” (“The US Veteran Health Care System Is Overwhelmed and Failing”). President Obama ordered a review of this issue that offered help and suggestions (“The US Veteran Health Care System Is Overwhelmed and Failing”). The United States Government is trying to help out the Veterans Association by sending them warnings and suggestions. The VA is not acting upon them. They are sitting back and just playing it out. They need to step in and act

Military medicine has a rich and long history. The medical and health care delivery lessons gained through multiple wars fought in the past decades are applied to improve the care for military personnel and their families. It continually evolves and adapts to the current mandates of the government.