Veterans air concerns about healthcare services, benefits at Long Beach VA townhall meeting

Sean Belk
Staff Writer

If it weren’t for benefits and medical services provided by the United States Department of Veterans Affair (VA), Tim Bird, a 65-year-old U.S. Army veteran who served during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, might not be alive today, he said.
Still, Bird said a program called VASH (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing), which provides veterans with housing vouchers, case management and clinical services through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the VA, is being “mismanaged” locally.
“There are serious problems going on with that program, and it’s because of mismanagement,” he said during a townhall meeting at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System on Tuesday, March 10, adding that many local veterans remain homeless for months before being helped because of staffing issues related to social workers.
Bird, who once lived in a hotel and who has advocated for forming a VASH advisory committee, was one of nearly 50 veterans who attended the meeting at the Long Beach VA’s Learning Center Auditorium. It was the third town hall organized in the last year at the VA for veterans to express concerns about services and benefits.
The regular forums are part of nationwide efforts, brought forward by VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald, to have VA medical centers and benefits offices improve communication with veterans, according to a prepared statement about the event.
“Caring for veterans is a calling, and our first commitment is to provide veterans and their families the timely, quality care and benefits they have earned and deserve through their service to our nation,” McDonald said in the statement. “As we seek continual improvement and to rebuild trust among veterans, it is critical that we continue to listen and learn directly from those who use our system.”
During the forum, a panel of doctors, senior staff members and management from Long Beach VA and the regional VA benefits office in Los Angeles took questions posed by veterans and attempted to provide answers.
Issues brought forward included: inadequate staffing, such as lack of primary-care and mental-health physicians; changes in group-therapy sessions that aren’t properly promoted; miscommunication between departments; organizational issues; reduced funding from Congress; and patients not being able to get prescription medications.
Michael Fisher, who was hired as director of the VA Long Beach Healthcare System last year, told the group of veterans that changes have been implemented as a result of the last town hall about three months ago.
He said four new medical-surgery inpatient beds have been added and more beds are on the way to prevent congestion and provide patients with better “access,” which Fisher said is a leading concern for the medical center.
While some veterans gave praise, others criticized the VA for recently spending millions of dollars on new buildings and seismic upgrades at the Long Beach facilities while having insufficient staff.
Dan Behan, a 57-year-old Lakewood resident who served as a Navy Seal from 1975 to 1995, explained that his doctor retired in December and he still has yet to be reassigned a new primary-care physician to sign off on refills for prescribed medications.
Behan also said that, because of mail-theft incidents, he has requested that the VA discontinue mailing his pain medications, including controlled substances, but the hospital continues mailing them anyway.
“I’m scared to death every month because I have to come here and I don’t know if I’m going to get my meds,” he said during the town hall.

In response, doctors and management said the hospital is in the process of correcting recruitment issues and is hiring about 35 staff members in the mental-health department.
“We are hiring as fast as we can right now,” Fisher said. “It’s not fast enough. I’ll agree with you. We’re looking at different ways in our [human resources] processes to be more effective and efficient, but it is a huge priority for us.”
Some veterans brought forward a request to implement a pilot program to allow homeless veterans to park their vehicles overnight at the Long Beach VA campus. Fisher, however, said such a proposal poses a “security risk,” adding that an initial assessment concluded that the VA doesn’t have enough resources to allow veterans to park overnight.
An alternative, he said, might be to contact property owners in Orange County who would be willing to rent property out to homeless veterans.
Robert McKenrick, director of the VA’s Los Angeles regional office, said the request to start such a pilot program for homeless veterans who live in their vehicles has been submitted to the VA’s headquarters, but he has yet to hear back.
McKenrick said McDonald recently visited the greater Los Angeles area to learn more about homelessness among veterans in the region, noting that the secretary plans to add 500 more employees and invest $30 million to address the issue regionally.
In addition, McKenrick said both President Barack Obama and McDonald stated recently that the U.S. government hopes to completely eliminate a backlog of pending disability-compensation claims, which reached 611,000 nationwide in 2013, by the end of this year, adding that switching to electronic data has so far helped reduce the buildup.
“We got a commitment to the American people and to the veterans to get that backlog taken care of and get it done,” McKenrick said. “So, we’re working on it.”
He noted that the VA secretary has expressed a commitment to provide all veterans with assistance, whether it be issues related to medical services, job placement, Social Security benefits or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), from the time they are “sworn into service” until they die.
“It’s not just our job to point them in the right direction,” McKenrick told the group of veterans. “We will help you get there. We will help you engage, and we will follow up to make sure you get the service you need.” ß