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RED TAPE ENTANGLES VETERANS' CARE IN ATLANTA --

"It's an underfunded and stretched system."

 

 

Story here... http://www.ajc.com/metro/
content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/
03/06/0307natatlantava.html

Story below:

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Red tape entangles vets' care in Atlanta

By RON MARTZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Two days a week, Mark Sikes wakes before dawn to catch a van that will take him and his motorized wheelchair 53 miles from his home in Bogart to the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Decatur.

On most visits to the center, Sikes, 47, attends therapy sessions designed to help him learn to live without the use of his legs. The former Army specialist was paralyzed in 2005 by a ruptured spinal disc, which he believes is the result of a beating at the hands of disgruntled GIs while he was serving as a member of the military police in South Korea 25 years ago.

But one day each month, Sikes says, he spends hours shuttling between departments to find someone who will authorize the medication he needs to keep the pain in his back and legs at bay. His battles with what he describes as a bureaucratic maze at the hospital, which has been going on for more than six months, leave him frustrated and angry.

"It's to the point you just want to come home and finish it, just take a gun and blow your brains out, just get it over with," he said. "This is not living."

As investigators sift through the problems with health care for active duty military personnel at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, the care provided to veterans at VA medical centers are being considered as an alternative.

But some veterans say VA hospitals present their own set of challenges.

"The system can be very intimidating if you don't know what you're doing," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Fred Rowland, 71, of Cumming.

But, he added, "If you're smart enough to get to the right person, they have some of the best doctors around."

VA hospitals are run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, while Walter Reed is run by the Department of Defense.

In December, a study by the Harvard Medical School found that VA hospitals provide some of the best health care available, even among private facilities, for many life-threatening illnesses.

Dr. David Bower, chief of staff at the Atlanta VA hospital, said, "We feel we provide the care equal to anything you can get in the city or in the region."

But getting to that care can be a problem, and Bower admits that demand in the Atlanta area — more than 60,000 veterans are treated at the Decatur facility each year — can outstrip resources.

"We are continuing to grow to try to meet that demand," Bower said, adding that the facility has gotten approval to hire additional staff, including about 40 mental health positions to meet the needs of returning veterans.

The facility has a staff of about 2,000. Most veterans receive out-patient treatment, although there are 173 beds for in-patient care.

"We make sure we don't overload a provider," Bower said. "When a capacity is reached we wait until we get somebody else hired."

Last week, as the Walter Reed scandal unfolded, the Disabled American Veterans of America urged Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to move active-duty patients to VA facilities closer to their homes.

"If the Defense Department can't or won't provide our injured soldiers with the decent living conditions they need and deserve, they should be given the option of moving to VA facilities closer to their homes where they can receive top-notch health care and rehabilitation services that will improve their quality of life," Bradley Barton, the DAV national commander, wrote in a letter to Gates.

But David Autry, a DAV spokesman in Washington, said dealing with the VA's bureaucracy can be a nightmare for many veterans unfamiliar with the system.

Yasmin Sarnol, 45, of Buford said it took her more than eight months — and several letters to members of Congress — for the VA in Atlanta to deal with her after she was medically retired last year from the Army Reserve following more than 24 years of service.

And when her husband, Master Sgt. Michael Christ, 49, returned after a year in Iraq with a knee injury suffered in a mortar attack, he said he was told to go the VA for treatment.

But the VA would not accept him because he was on what is referred to as "terminal leave," the final leave before exiting military service, and was not technically eligible for treatment since it was not an emergency.

Christ said he was told to go to Fort Benning in Columbus to seek treatment at the facility for active-duty personnel, but could not drive because of injuries he suffered in an automobile accident while on leave.

Meanwhile, Christ and Sarnol said they are living off her disability and his salary as a postal worker while paying private doctors for care.

"You can't believe the financial burden we're dealing with," Sarnol said. "We're fighting our own country for our entitlement."

Rowland, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said he believes the VA in Atlanta will be hard-pressed to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans when they start flooding the system.

The DAV's Autry said more than 200,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets already have sought treatment from the VA nationwide and many more are expected.

"It's an underfunded and stretched system," Autry said. "It's a wonder they have maintained the high quality they have, given the budgetary constraints."

James Nicholson, the U.S. secretary of Veterans Affairs, said this week he is moving to address some of those issues. In an interview on National Public Radio, Nicholson, a Vietnam combat veteran, said the VA would hire 100 patient advocates to deal with returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

"I want them to attach themselves to those patients and their families, to cut the red tape, and to cut the sometimes just overbearing bureaucracy than can confront these people," Nicholson said.

Nicholson also said the VA is working to speed up the processing of nearly 400,000 benefit claims.

"Our effort," said the Atlanta VA's Bower, "is to do everything we can for the veteran and work within the resources we have."

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Larry Scott  --