Overall, VA’s reliance on inpatient care would taper off as the system catches up to an outpatient model that private hospitals moved toward decades ago. In many places, the government-run health-care system’s growing reliance on private doctors and hospital systems would intensify, picking up where VA would retreat, the recommendations show.
Lawmakers began poring through the fine print in the lengthy proposal on Monday to learn what would happen to hospitals and clinics in their districts, while some members issued defiant statements that previewed the battle to come to stave off reductions in service to veterans in their districts.
With changes proposed at most of the system’s existing 171 hospitals and 1,112 outpatient clinics, the plan that will be sent to the congressionally mandated Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission also drew intense interest among veterans groups and policymakers.
The review mandated by a 2018 law will soon kick off a year of potentially divisive hearings in affected communities, culminating in a recommendation from President Biden on which closures should move forward, then a vote in Congress if lawmakers dislike the proposals. Lawmakers must accept all of the changes or none, and would have to vote to deny the proposals to stop them. If they take no action, the plans would take effect. The transformation on the table for Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough — while a reconfiguration, rather than a contraction overall — will be among the most politically sensitive of his tenure.
“Today’s veteran population is vastly different from what it was even five years ago, let alone decades ago,” Russ Duerstine, deputy director of Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by the conservative Koch network, said in a statement. “A rigid system that cannot adapt to the changing and unique needs of the veterans it serves leads to waste, complications, and ultimately, an absence of care.”
Duerstine’s group came to prominence during the Trump administration with a campaign to outsource more medical care for veterans and was instrumental in muscling the review into the 2018 law, known as the Mission Act, which allowed most of the 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA care to see doctors outside the traditional system of government hospitals.
The restructuring McDonough proposed Monday is driven by changing reality for veterans, the report said: The Department of Veterans Affairs spends billions of dollars a year to maintain crumbling facilities that impede doctors from giving veterans the best possible care, and its hospitals increasingly are located in the wrong places.
Almost 70 percent of VA’s health-care facilities were built more than 50 years ago, and the buildings have a median age of 60 years — compared with 8½ years for private-sector hospitals. According to the agency’s budget submission to Congress for fiscal 2022, the health system…
Read More: Veterans Affairs releases plan to close dozens of hospitals and clinics and
