Michigan veterans continue to face hurdles when it comes to scheduling medical appointments through the Veterans Affairs hospital system.
Many veterans live hours from their closest V.A. medical centers in Michigan. Adding to that, the V.A. uses dozens of overlapping systems to schedule medical appointments.
Flanked by helicopters in a National Guard hanger in Grand Ledge, a congressional sub-committee on Friday discussed issues with what people described as the V.A.’s convoluted scheduling system.
Retired Major Michael Reeve, Director of Veterans Affairs in Shiawassee County, told the committee about a recent experience he had with the V.A. system. Reeve had to make an appointment at a V.A. facility two hours from his home in Owosso.
“I looked at how many other providers were in between my house and Midland, and there were 51 other providers,” testified Reeve.
The V.A.’s new External Provider Scheduling (EPS) program is supposed to make it easier for veterans to book medical appointments with non-V.A. medical providers.
The EPS program has already been rolled out nationwide. But it has been having problems recruiting non-V.A. medical providers.
U.S. Representative Nikki Budzinski (D-Il) said the EPS program’s struggles are further complicating scheduling medical appointments for the nation’s veterans.
“The whole process takes far too many phone calls and quite frankly far too much time. It delays veterans' care and it needs to be fixed,” said Budzinski during the hearing.
Mid-Michigan U.S. Representative Tom Barrett (R-MI) chaired Friday’s hearing.
The freshman Republican congressman and veteran said his takeaway from the hearing is there’s an ongoing bureaucratic inefficiency that’s slowing the process of integrating non-V.A. providers into the EPS program.
“We have to recruit more community care providers to use that system,” said Barrett.
At the hearing, a Government Accountability Office representative said the V.A. needs a strategic plan to integrate all of its scheduling systems.
A V.A. official said the department hopes to address the GOA’s concerns later this summer.
