When the federal Department of Veterans Affairs last week released a report suggesting cutbacks in outpatient clinics serving military veterans in Northern New Mexico, it immediately riled some veterans and drew pushback from our senators in Washington.
And for good reason. After reading the somewhat dense report — and its claim the agency charged with carrying out the nation’s obligations to those who served in uniform only is interested in what’s best for veterans — one can be left wondering what the VA bureaucracy was thinking when it surveyed the situation in this largely rural state with an already inadequate health care system.
US Sen. Martin Heinrich, DN.M., was particularly disturbed by the idea that outpatient clinics in Española, Raton, Gallup and Las Vegas, NM, might be shuttered.
“Closing down community-based outpatient clinics that New Mexico veterans rely on is not an option — and it will not happen without a fight,” declared Heinrich, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies.
The VA in 2018 began a required study of facilities and projected needs in order to make recommendations to a presidentially appointed, bipartisan Asset and Infrastructure Commission.
In releasing the report, the VA described it as the result of years of research and analyzes of various markets, “intended to help VA build a health care network with the right facilities, in the right places, to provide the right care for all Veterans , including underserved and at-risk Veteran populations in every part of the country — making sure our facilities and services are accessible to Veterans in their communities.”
But Heinrich says that kind of bureaucratic rationale believed what’s happening in the real word.
“This multi-year process, begun under the Trump administration, has relied on pre-pandemic data that doesn’t accurately reflect the current realities of veterans in our state,” he said.
Among deficiencies in the department’s assessments, Heinrich and US Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, DN.M., said in a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, is failure to fully account for the unique demographics of New Mexico, which has the ninth largest percentage of veterans by state population. “This veteran population is not concentrated in an urban area,” the letter noted, “but rather is dispersed across the fifth largest geographic state in the country.”
Nearly half of these veterans are over 65, and due to illness and service-related disabilities, the senators wrote, many find it difficult to travel long distances for medical care in a state that faces one of the worst health care shortages in the United States .
All but one of New Mexico’s 33 counties is classified by the Health Resources Services Administration as full or partial primary care Health Professional Shortage Areas.
The idea of replacing outpatient clinics with telehealth services is another problem, since New Mexico has the highest percentage of residents in the Southwest without adequate broadband internet service.
Furthermore, the senators noted, “many veterans have limited technological literacy, are elderly, or lack access to a computer, phone or laptop. It is inappropriate to expect that these veterans will have to cover the cost of purchasing these electronics and internet service, all in order to access health care services they have more than earned through their sacrifice for our country.”
The Asset and Infrastructure Commission, whose members require Senate confirmation, will hold public hearings on proposed modernization and realignment of VA facilities. All proposals must be reviewed by the White House and are expected to reach Congress by early 2023.
By then, for the sake of some 69,000 veterans enrolled in the VA system in the New Mexico and southern Colorado area, let’s hope the recommendations are more aligned with reality.
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