The Veterans
Administration has produced an individualize handbook for very good thing and I
looked forward to receiving mine. The
benefits booklets I currently have provide the information I want if I wade
through them long enough. This handbook
should eliminate those periodic searches.
Mine arrived
yesterday. I sat down with it and
eagerly looked through it. Surprise on
page 25. The booklet, essentially a
merge and print project, lists my health care facility – my source for primary
care and other services- is listed as Bay Pines VAMC in Bay Pines FL. All the contact phone numbers are Florida 727
area code numbers. The handbook is essentially
a collection of errors.
I immediately
began to wonder if my current appointments scheduled for April and May were at
risk of being cancelled and if my primary care had somehow been shifted back to
Florida. While my first few years in the
VA system were provided by Bay Pines and a satellite clinic of Bay Pines, when
we moved in October 2006 I had my primary care shifted to Mountain Home
VAMC. While I was pleased with the care
I received at Bay Pines, I have no desire to travel to Florida for all my
routine appointments, labs, and other care when I live 28 miles from Mountain Home.
A half-hour
phone call has supposedly moved my enrollment from Bay Pines to Mountain Home. Another phone call to my primary care team
indicated that my appointments for April and May are still valid and active.
Some
searching, on-line, this morning suggests that I am not at all unique in
discovering this problem.
Shows me the following:
“Wrong
facility information - what is given is somehow the veteran’s favored facility,
not necessarily where care is provided. “
I find this
somewhat disconcerting in that I chose both Bay Pines and Mountain Home due to
their proximity to my home. While the
people at Bay Pines provided what I felt to be high quality care, so do the people
at Mountain Home. My preferred facility
is Mountain Home and I sincerely hope nothing further untoward occurs to cause
me to reconsider.
As of today,
I still have confidence in the VA system.
Film at 2300!
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