Veterans day is less than a month away, and problems are being reported from Veterans around the country relating to their care. Veterans deserve to be the focus especially with Veterans Day approaching. VA Mismanagement relating to community care consults is the source of a problem I am hoping the agency can fix before public scrutiny or Congress needs to get involved. Let’s get into what is being reported.
In past years, Congress has allowed additional healthcare services to Veterans rendered outside of main VA health facilities, known as community care. This is sometimes permitted for geographic reasons or just to increase options for Veterans. Community care can add significant value to a veterans healthcare and even though they are seen in the community the VA still manages the overall care as the primary health provider.
Yet, Veterans are being told they can no longer see some of their community care providers due to VA rescinding their agreements for fee payment to these providers. In some cases, the Veterans are hearing the agency is asking their providers for large sums of back payments (or recoupment) due to changing the agency position on covered treatments after the fact.
There is more to learn here as a national advocate who has testified in front of Congress many times in the past. I am a trusted voice for Veterans that sometimes fields emails about these issues out in the field. I am hearing that due to this some of these providers may not only be no longer able to serve Veterans but also be made to fight the VA over recoupment after rendering valuable healthcare services to our community.
This is the problem with having non-veteran leadership at the VA. The fact that doctors are putting their life’s work into providing care to Veterans in community care is a blessing and a great investment, for the VA to change fee policies without notification and disrupt our Veterans healthcare and show bad faith to the medical community we rely on for our health care is unacceptable and needs to be fixed.
Starting this week I am reaching out to national veteran service organization executives to bring this issue to their attention and begin to find solutions. Veterans are reporting that TriWest, the third party provider of community care for veterans may be the entity that is tasked with recoupment of fees and it is unclear if this blame game between VA and TriWest is going to end soon, but it is important this be looked into.
Congress may need to investigate this, if the VA can’t fix this because the agency should not be changing fee basis after the fact for treatments Veterans deserve and need and the last thing we should be doing is burning valued partners, and causing bureaucratic problems our Veterans do not need to be dealing with, on the eve of Veterans Day.