VA Health Care: Access for Chattanooga-Area Veterans Needs Improvement
Highlights
Veterans residing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have had difficulty accessing Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care. In response, VA has acted to reduce travel times to medical facilities and waiting times for appointments with primary and specialty care physicians. Recently, VA released a draft national plan for restructuring its health care system as part of a planning initiative known as Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES). GAO was asked to assess Chattanooga-area veterans' access to inpatient hospital and outpatient primary and specialty care against VA's guidelines for travel times and appointment waiting times and to determine how the draft CARES plan would affect Chattanooga-area veterans' access to such care.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Veterans Affairs | As part of his deliberations concerning whether additional access improvements for Chattanooga-area veterans beyond those contained in the draft CARES plan are warranted, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs should explore alternatives such as (1) purchasing inpatient care locally for a larger proportion of Chattanooga-area veterans' workload, particularly focusing on those veterans who may experience longer travel times as a result of the proposed shift of inpatient workload from Murfreesboro to Nashville; (2) expediting the opening of the four proposed community-based clinics; and (3) providing primary care locally for more of those veterans whose access will remain outside VA's travel guideline, despite the opening of the four clinics. |
Closed – Implemented
As part of its review of Chattanooga-area veterans' access to VA health care, GAO recommended that when deliberating CARES decisions, the Secretary explore improving these veterans' access to inpatient and outpatient care. In addition to expediting the opening of two outpatient clinics in the Chattanooga area (which GAO noted last year in accomplishment report GAO-04-3265A), VA now purchases selected inpatient services from local providers and is explore expanding these purchases. Also, VA considered, but decided not to purchase primary care for those Chattanooga-area veterans whose travel times would remain outaide VA guidelines, despite the opening of new VA outpatient clinics.
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