{"id":17902,"date":"2017-06-01T06:50:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-01T12:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=17902"},"modified":"2017-06-01T06:50:52","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T12:50:52","slug":"at-town-hall-tester-hears-of-broken-va-health-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/06\/at-town-hall-tester-hears-of-broken-va-health-system\/","title":{"rendered":"At town hall, Tester hears of broken VA health system"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Choice\"<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Missoula-area veterans share their experiences with the CHOICE program during a town-hall meeting in Missoula on Wednesday.<\/p><\/div>\n

When combat veteran Christine Bailey first discovered the lump in her breast, her first call was like that of any veteran. She dialed up to the VA Montana Health Care System, only to learn that it didn\u2019t offer breast care for women.<\/p>\n

Bailey\u2019s problems compounded when, under the CHOICE program, which allows veterans to seek care outside the VA, she was met with a tangle\u00a0of red tape and lengthy delays in trying to get authorization to pursue mammograms and biopsies.<\/p>\n

Fighting back tears, the veteran told Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday\u00a0that the system needs to change on a number of levels, and Tester agreed.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cI had a cancer scare, and the process seeking authorization seemed to take a long time for someone who thinks they have cancer,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cGoing through the CHOICE program was a lot of, \u2018I\u2019ll call you back,\u2019 and that seemed to be a huge hurdle to get over. CHOICE kept seeming to put me on the back burner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tester, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs<\/a>, held town hall meetings in Missoula and Billings this week to get feedback from area veterans and providers on what\u2019s broken within the VA\u2019s well-intended CHOICE program.<\/p>\n

The program was adopted by Congress in 2014 to cover gaps within the VA Health Care System. Among them, it enabled veterans who were unable to get an appointment\u00a0within 30 days\u00a0to receive care from a provider outside the VA system.<\/p>\n

The program aimed to address scandalous backlogs in the VA system and, at the time, it served as a win for rural veterans across Montana, where accessing health care and medical specialists is a difficult, if not impossible, task.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Tester and area veterans say the program has failed to work as intended, and Tester and his fellow committee members in the U.S. Senate are looking to fix the system, so long as President Donald Trump allows it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to focus on writing a bill that will determine where CHOICE is going to go,\u201d Tester said. \u201cOver the next few months\u2013we\u2019re talking June and July\u2013we\u2019re going to be working on a major CHOICE bill that will be rolled out sometime in September or October.\u201d<\/p>\n

What form that bill takes remains to be seen. During his travels, Tester has heard a number of suggestions, from doing away with the CHOICE program altogether and investing the savings back into the VA, to privatizing the entire VA system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, what we want is a bill that works for the veterans and, quite frankly, if we\u2019re talking about filling in the gaps in the VA, which is what the CHOICE program was meant to do, it\u2019s got to work for the providers too,\u201d Tester said, adding that he would probably\u00a0resist efforts to privatize the system, even as that drumbeat grows louder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not somebody who wants to privatize the VA,\u201d he added. \u201cI think the VA backstop has to be there, and every veterans service organization we heard from back in February said the same thing\u2013don\u2019t privatize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Meet\"<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Sen. Jon Tester, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs (center), takes notes as combat veteran Thomas Vanantwerp describes his frustrations with the VA\u2019s CHOICE program.<\/p><\/div>\n

The problems with the CHOICE program mentioned at the town hall in Missoula ran the spectrum, from too much red tape to a shortage of medical providers working in Montana.<\/p>\n

For the private providers who choose to work the VA, the complications are also compounded by difficulties in getting the VA\u2019s authorization to provide care, as in Bailey\u2019s case, and getting paid back once that care is given.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuthorizations are the number one issue for us,\u201d said Dr. Dean French, the CEO of Community Medical Center. \u201cWe have staff tied up for hours trying to get authorizations done, and it keeps them from doing other work.\u201d<\/p>\n

French, who is also a veteran, said the VA owes the Missoula hospital $2.1 million for providing care through the CHOICE program. And that\u2019s just the amount that stands 90 days past due.\u00a0French said late payments deter providers from participating in the VA program.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy bean counters ask why we do this and, of course, I say it\u2019s because they\u2019re veterans,\u201d French said.<\/p>\n

French sees other problems with the program as well. While providers outside the VA team up with insurers to improve their patient advocacy\u2013and the health care system in general\u2013he believes that effort is lacking in the VA.<\/p>\n

Too often, French and others said, veterans are left to navigate their personal care with little support from a case manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like that\u2019s what\u2019s missing here,\u201d said French. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to spend money, why not spend money making sure veterans aren\u2019t having to always advocate for themselves, but have people who understand the system that are working that veteran\u2019s case day and night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Kathy Berger, the new director of the VA Montana Health Care System, and Tony Giljum, the system\u2019s associate director, both said the state is working to address the challenges. (See related story<\/a>.) They include filling vacant positions within VA Montana and launching a new in-state medical residency program to bolster providers.<\/p>\n

Giljum said VA Montana is also working to improve the CHOICE program by working directly with patients and providers in local communities to ensure veterans receive timely care. Doing so would eliminate distant third party providers, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to rebuild the relationship with our veterans and our providers,\u201d said Giljum. \u201cOne of the unfortunate outcomes of the situation we\u2019re in, if the providers aren\u2019t paid, they drop out of the system. It\u2019s our intent to start rolling that out and rebuilding those relationships with the veterans and the providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of veterans also expressed concern over Trump\u2019s proposal to cut<\/a> monthly stipends to some disabled veterans, along with reducing veterans\u2019 cost-of-living adjustments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re robbing Peter to pay Paul,\u201d one veteran said.<\/p>\n

Tester responded, \u201cIt\u2019s not the way the program should work.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Missoula Current<\/a>, an independent online newspaper, of which\u00a0Martin Kidston is the founding editor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When combat veteran Christine Bailey first discovered the lump in her breast, her first call was like that of any veteran. She dialed up to the VA Montana Health Care System, only to learn that it didn\u2019t offer breast care for women. Bailey\u2019s problems compounded when, under the CHOICE program, which allows veterans to seek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":17903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[5898,2356,255],"class_list":["post-17902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-choice-program","tag-sen-jon-tester","tag-veterans-administration","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17902"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17913,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902\/revisions\/17913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}