HEALTHCARE
By: Hermon Negash
It was a Wednesday at the American Legion in Fayetteville when Army veteran Butch Finley walked inside. Every Wednesday is chili day at the American Legion and Finley sat down and began to eat lunch with his daughter. When he was asked about his experiences at the VA hospital, he instantly hung his head.
“On a scale of 1 to 5, I’d give them a one,” Finley said.
Veterans Affairs hospitals have been under a microscope since the uncovering of the falsification of patient wait times at the Phoenix VA hospital in 2014.
USA Today obtained data, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, from the VA and it showed that VA hospitals failed to treat three out of five veterans within 14 days. An internal audit was later released and showed that 13 percent of staff at 216 VA health facilities were directed to falsify wait time data.
Then VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned after the audit was released and mentioned the difficulty of the VA’s 14-day target period for care. Wait times should not correlate with performance bonuses and increases in salary Shinseki said at the time.
Wait times have decreased at the Fayetteville VA hospital since 2014 according to VA data. The percent of wait times more than 30 days dropped two percentage points to 5.3 percent in 2015. It then dropped to 3.8 percent in 2016 and is now at 2.3 percent in 2017.
The Fayetteville VA hospital’s wait times are more favorable than the 2017 wait times of neighboring VA hospitals. Little Rock’s VA hospital has 3.6 percent of its appointments with wait times more than 30 days; Memphis’ VA hospital sits at 4.3 percent and Shreveport is at 5.1 percent.
Owner of Doomsday Coffee and Roasterie Jason Collins, an Army veteran who receives the majority of his healthcare at the VA, said he understands why wait times could be a problem in VA hospitals.
“I’m a little torn because I know the amount of patients they have to see. You have to weigh between wait times and proper care,” he said.
Collins spoke of the number of veterans who need care and the fact that the United States has been in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. His solution to help wait times was simple, blunt and straight to the point: Stop sending troops to war.
“The VA is damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” Collins said. “If they start pushing people out, they’re not going to receive proper treatment, things aren’t going to get diagnosed properly and people are going to die. If they take their time with every patient like they’re supposed to, you’ll see longer wait times.”
SHEP scores, which stands for survey of healthcare experiences of patients, does exactly what its acronym says. Veterans complete the survey after their appointment. The survey asks questions about the patient’s care from the nurses, from the doctors, the hospital environment and their overall experience at the hospital among other things.
SHEP scores rate primary and specialty care and further rate routine and urgent in each type of care. Fayetteville VA’s primary routine care SHEP score is 85.86 percent, according to VA data, which places it in the middle of the pack in comparison to other VA clinics and hospitals in Arkansas. The primary urgent care SHEP score is 70.85 percent.
The specialty routine care SHEP score is 85.36 percent and the urgent care score is 70.21 percent, both less than Little Rock’s scores which are 87.52 percent for routine care and 80.25 percent for urgent care.
David Stanphill, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, had nothing but good things to say about Fayetteville’s VA hospital.
“I’ve never been denied any service and I’m always seen in an appropriate amount of time,” Stanphill said. “If I had to get in that day, they’d get me in that day.”
Stanphill is a prostate cancer survivor and the VA helped him in his cancer care.
“I was sent to the best prostate cancer doctor in the country. The VA paid for my airfare, taxi and my hotel,” Stanphill said.
The VA also helped in his payment for his $20,000 surgery; he had a $1,500 copay. Stanphill is not the only veteran to receive help from the VA even though the care was not given directly through the VA.
Collins had a similarly favorable experience with the VA. He fell out of a tree stand in a hunting accident that broke his back and sent him to the VA hospital in Kansas City. The VA was unable to help him and sent him to a level one trauma center. His surgery would have cost roughly $40,000 but the VA took care of the bill, Collins said.
It was hard for them to complain about their experiences at the VA hospital Collins and Stanphill said. Collins thinks that some veterans failed to put themselves in the nurse’s shoes or the doctor’s shoes, realize the influx of veterans needing care and see things from their perspective, he said.
“In general, people aren’t empathetic. They just see what they’re going through,” Collins said.
He also thinks that those who have bad things to say about the Fayetteville VA are the people who are impossible to please, Stanphill said.
“It’s frustrating; I appreciate what I receive from the VA while they take advantage,” Stanphill said. “Some people, you just can’t do enough for them.”
Recent Comments