Session shows continued frustration with VA

WASILLA — Veterans are facing uncertainties after recent implementation of a new system, from prolonged delays in authorization for medical procedures to questions about marijuana use.

Given how difficult struggles with bureaucratic inefficiencies in the federal department have been, some veterans said they weren’t optimistic things could improve. Officials say the system has made some progress recently, but still isn’t perfect.

Department of Veterans Affairs interim Alaska director Lynda Boyle told local veterans at a listening session Tuesday officials were still working to improve the situation. Veterans told her issues with the Choice program — implemented via the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 — were particularly frustrating.

Some aspects of the program, designed to allow veterans to seek treatment in their own communities, have improved, Boyle said. For example, veterans had previously faced 60-day reauthorizations for chronic diseases and treatments. The program now renews for chronic treatments on an annual basis, Boyle said.

“If the VA authorizes care for me and I chose to use my Medicare when I get there, Medicare is going to be billed, not the VA,” she said.

Complaints about the VA are generally variations on a theme, said Richard Hamblin, a Vietnam-War-era veteran. They also involve strong feelings.

“You’ve been hearing a lot of what I would describe as anger from people who care more about their country and about each other than they care about themselves,” he said.

Veterans are long accustomed to a litany of procedural delays, Hamblin said. For example, veterans can spend months waiting for approval for referrals to specialists and procedures.

“I’ve heard Seattle, Kansas City, Las Vegas,” he said. “I swear I’ve talked to people in Bangladesh trying to get this done.”

The frustration was widespread, and concerns for their fellow veterans makes veterans more angry, Hamblin said.

“If it was just me, I would take the hit,” he said. “But it’s happening to the people that I care about, that I’ve served with, and there’s a lot of anger, really, a great deal of anger, pretty much unrestrained. Does everyone feel more like yelling than sitting quietly?”

In a separate interview, Hamblin said he was generally pessimistic about the prospects for meaningful reform at the VA. If veterans are angry, it was because of a wider national anger, Hamblin said.

“The times are angry,” he said.

Alaska veterans were unfortunately caught up in wider national reforms, Boyle said.

“I hear your frustration, absolutely your frustration about issues with the Choice,” she said. “I also recognize as a veteran myself that what we had in Alaska previously didn’t need to be fixed. So when Choice came along for other places in the country that needed fixing, it made a difference for veterans in other places. The difference it made here for us wasn’t a difference that was necessarily a good one.”

The Alaska chapter of the Choice program has also developed a workaround to place emphasis on timeliness, said Cindy Massey, one of the program’s managers. Part of the problem involves educating local healthcare providers about the Choice program. The system is getting better all the time, Massey said. If Choice program volunteers don’t respond in a timely fashion, Veterans should call (907) 257-6904, Massey said.

“Is that ideal?” she said. “No. But it’s the best we can do right now, and we want to take care of our veterans.”

At least one Anchorage veteran, Eric Hill, was more optimistic. Doctors discovered a heart arrhythmia — possibly exacerbated by his time in the service — during a knee surgery. He travelled to North Carolina to seek treatment, and doctors told him not to travel back to Alaska because of concerns about his condition, so he asked the VA to move a hearing about his case to North Carolina. Officials told him he would have to return to Anchorage. He returned, only to discover his case had indeed been relocated to North Carolina.

General information bulletins went to his Alaska address during the period, which compounded frustrations, Hill said.

“When you were just sending just general information, oh, I get that,” he said. “But soon as it’s about that case, it bounced directly to somewhere I’m not at.”

Part of the problem, said Veterans Service Center Manager Chad Pamelow, was that two departments within the VA — one that managed health care and the other that determined eligibility for benefits — had similar tasks but virtually no communication. The problem is a national one, he said.

“VHA (Veterans Health Care Administration) has a computer system, VBA (Veterans Benefits Association) has a computer system, and they don’t talk,” he said.

After a private session with Pamelow, Hill said he thought progress could be made, based officials’ concern.

“They looked as shocked as I was,” he said.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.