NH Veterans May Soon Get Care from Private Hospitals
WASHINGTON – An effort to streamline veterans’ health care and reduce the need for long, out-of-state hospital stays may soon allow New Hampshire veterans to seek care at private, local hospitals.
The option of contracting out veterans’ health care to private facilities, especially in places with no acute in-patient veterans’ hospitals, including New Hampshire, is one solution raised in a draft report published in August by a VA commission charged with improving care and eliminating waste nationwide.
The shift could mean New Hampshire’s 134,000 veterans – who represent more than 11 percent of the state’s residents – no longer would have to travel as far as Jamaica Plain, Mass., to receive in-patient hospital care.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi, who will settle the issue once he receives a final commission report in December, on Wednesday briefed several New England lawmakers, including New Hampshire Congressman Jeb Bradley, on the commission’s progress.
Under current rules, veterans’ health coverage pays for stays in private hospitals only for emergencies, and even then only until veterans are stable enough to be transferred to VA hospitals.
Ever since the VA Medical Center in Manchester, NH, stopped providing in-patient care in 1999, some Granite State veterans have had to travel hundreds of miles to VA hospitals in Vermont and Massachusetts.
“We had one member in our post, they’d put him a van and drive him all the way down to Roxbury and Jamaica Plain,” said Robert Bournizal, commander of the William H. Jutras American Legion Post in Manchester. “He used to joke, ‘If the ride don’t kill me, nothing will.’”
Rep. Bradley said forcing elderly and ailing veterans to trek long distances for medical care is wrong.
“It’s a long drive for veterans, many of whom are disabled, and it’s a problem for family members that want to be with the veterans,” Bradley said after meeting with Principi.
Once in a VA hospital, veterans are covered until they are discharged. Under the proposed changes, they would receive the same coverage in private hospitals that have VA contracts.
“I think that’s an option that makes a lot of sense,” said Bradley, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “That way, any of the 14 community hospitals in New Hampshire would potentially be able to take veterans and offer them care much closer to home and family members.”
He added, “The secretary told all of us in New England that the VA is moving in that direction.”
Even though the number of New Hampshire veterans is expected to plummet by about 2,000 a year over the next two decades, the average age of veterans and the percentage that seek VA medical care will increase, according to state veterans officials. The result, they said, will be added strain on an already stretched health care system.
“The growth is tremendous – they’re already taxed as far as they can go,” said Dennis J. Viola, director of the New Hampshire State Veterans Council.
Viola said contracting with private hospitals was a sound idea, and cited statistics that showed the VA sent 1,830 cases from New Hampshire to Boston in the year that ended in June.
“Access is the big issue,” said Dr. Marc F. Levenson, director of the VA Medical Center in Manchester. “The veterans want to have more of the health care services performed in New Hampshire rather than have to go out of state.
“In terms of capacity, we’re sort of up against it,” he added.
But all parties agree that the chance of opening a new full-service veterans’ hospital in the state is virtually nil, making it more desirable to utilize community-based out-patient clinics and private hospitals.
“When we ship veterans down to Massachusettsá it costs the VA more for treatment down there. Fiscally, it doesn’t make sense to me,” said Roland Patnode, commander of the New Hampshire American Legion. “Service could be done cheaper up here, and without the hassleá
“I don’t think we’ll ever see” a new VA hospital in New Hampshire, he said. “But hey, if the care is there, and if they can do it on a contract basis like that, we’re for it. It’s the thing of the future.”
