“… When I came to the Department of Veterans Affairs to run the Center for Women Veterans in 2016, I felt obligated to start using my VA health care benefits. If I were going to encourage others to sign up for VA care, I wanted to do so with confidence in the system I was recommending, along with the VA education, disability compensation and home loan guaranty benefits that had improved my own life. Once I learned how much better comprehensive, integrated care from a patient-aligned care team is as a patient, I never wanted to go back.”
“Now that I’m getting my care from a women’s health primary care provider at VA, I see the same person for all my routine medical care instead of needing to schedule different appointments on different days. VA fully recognizes that breast and cervical cancer screenings are part of routine primary care for me as a woman and integrates them into my regular appointments. Every provider, lab and radiology clinic at the VA Medical Center is “in network,” and I don’t get any surprise bills. Plus, my entire care team can see my full chart, which greatly relieves me of the stress in navigating a private health care system that most Americans find confusing.”
“Integrated care isn’t just easier for me as a patient — it’s also better. Studies have shown that fragmented care increases the risk of adverse health outcomes, including prescription opioid overdose. The risks associated with using multiple systems of care are amplified in high-risk populations, such as those with dementia — and we know VA patients skew older and have higher health burdens than non-VA patients. More generally, American private care — and how to pay for it and how much to pay — has become so confusing that many Americans may be forgoing necessary care altogether. This is why I believe it is so important that we preserve a strong VA system that centers on comprehensive, coordinated and low-cost care.”
“VA is not a perfect system. I continue to advocate for ongoing improvements in how welcoming VA is for women veterans. And yet, having used both military, private and VA-provided care, I know of no other system that is more focused on caring for veterans as whole people, regularly screening for — and referring patients to services for — homelessness and housing instability, food insecurity, military sexual trauma, legal challenges, intimate partner violence and suicide risk. While VA, as with the civilian health care sector, experienced challenges with access and wait times during the pandemic, years of preparation enabled an incredibly rapid pivot to telehealth that could shape the future of care delivery…” Read the full article here.
Source: Opinion: VA Excels in Comprehensive, Integrated Health Care – By Kayla M. Williams, November 15, 2021. GovernmentCIO.
