VA focusing on women veterans

The Department of Veterans Affairs top health-care official admitted that his agency is playing catch-up when it comes to delivering care to female veterans. A survey of women veterans last winter commissioned by The American Legion resulted in a similar opinion.But Robert A. Petzel, VA’s under secretary for Health in the Veterans Health Administration, assured The American Legion that VA is making strides in that area.“We have been concerned, as you have been for years, about the privacy, safety and convenience of the services that we provide for women,” Petzel told Legionnaires on Saturday during the organization’s 93rd National Convention in Minneapolis. “There’s no question about the fact that VHA started behind the power curve when it came to providing for private, safe, convenient health care for women. I think we’ve made tremendous strides in the last five years, and this is an area that (VA Secretary Eric) Shinseki has made an emphasis.“We’ve got over $200 million devoted to doing the last bits that we need to do for privacy in our medical centers, making sure that everybody has access to a gender-specific restroom, etc. We are providing for womens veterans coordinators in every one of medical centers. We still have work to do, and I don’t want anyone to think we’re going to rest on our laurels in terms of providing private, safe and convenient health care for women.”Petzel said two specific plans were being implemented to make this goal happen. “The most important part of this, from my perspective, is that we have said in our primary-care clinics we need to do one of two things,” he said. “(First), we will have a comprehensive women’s clinic where it’s specifically directed at women and all the services that might be needed. We have women’s clinics at probably three-fourths of our medical centers throughout the country. That’s one modality.“The other is that in our smaller facilities where we have not got the capacity to put together a comprehensive clinic for women, we are training the primary-care providers in caring for women.”Petzel also touched on mental-health services, saying VA has added 7,000 mental-health professionals to its staff in the past five years, and on veterans homelessness.“We’re spending $1 billion a year on specific programs aimed at homelessness – in addition to the approximate $3.2 billion that we spend on medical care for homeless veterans,” he said. “We can track some progress. We reduced by almost 60,000 the number of homeless veterans in this country. The goal is, by 2015, to have eliminated homeless in the veteran population. It is a national shame, as all of you know, that any veteran in this country will have to spend a single night out on the streets.”Petzel was questioned on the status of VA sharing electronic medical records with the Department of Defense. “Finally, that corner has been turned,” he said. “Before he left office, (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates and Secretary Shinseki signed a memorandum of agreement that we will develop a joint medical record. There’s a five-year slope to doing that, so we are on our way.”Petzel also thanked the Legion for its role in helping his department carry out its mission. “Veterans health care is a partnership,” he said. “We cannot do this job alone. We partner with the state, we partner with other federal agencies, we partner with local agencies, and most importantly, we partner with the veterans service organizations.”