A VA refferal
The VA: Community Care mission is to provide veterans with timely, high-quality care.
"Veterans Care Agreements are credentialed by RLDatix/Verge Health, which works on behalf of VA to assess and credential all non-CCN (Community Care Network) providers and agencies, as stated on VA.gov. This process ensures that providers are medically qualified, licensed, and competent to provide care to Veterans."
The mission statement certainly makes me comfortable that the providers are appropriately screened.
Then reality meets words. The words do not match reality. I can only speak from experience, which is based on reality. I feel reality can be helpful to VA leadership.
I will offer two examples.
I had been treated in a local hospital for a few weeks. It was determined I needed physical therapy for 33 days of in-facility care.
On arrival at the facility, I was wheeled in on a gurney to a room with other patients and then moved to a bed. My observations told me I did not want to be at this facility. I called my son-in-law to get me out ASAP.
After some discussion with the owner, he said he would only release me if I signed a document stating "against Doctor's Orders." OK, I just wanted out.
When I got home, I called the city health services. The manager said they had issued several violations to the facility. The facility never corrected the violations.
It was clear to me that the bed they put me in had never been sanitized. One of many observations on my part.
The other is recent. My VA Doctor (PTSD) retired, and I was referred to an outside provider. I checked the provider's credentials and found that through the BBB, they have had 198 complaints over recent years and 95 this year. Why then would the VA send our veterans to them?
These problems are only two, but they are examples of the separation of words and reality. To my knowledge, veterans are still being referred.
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