Vets Hospitals only for SOME vets?

[The Bread Guy]

In spite of ongoing assurances from Veterans Affairs that all veterans are properly cared for, veteran hospitals, and the generous suite of medical and holistic services they offer, remain closed to all veterans who joined after the Korean War.

Instead, soldiers who joined the military after 1953, and are suffering from a service-related disability, or are simply in need of long-term care, are relegated to provincial health care, with the option of applying to Veterans Affairs Canada for any additional care to be delivered through the provincial system.

It’s a two-tiered system that has veterans affairs advocates, including retired air force captain Sean Bruyea, pushing for changes that would allow all veterans access the same care.

“All World War II veterans, whether they served two years in the front line, six months back home handing out army boots, or even two days in England un-crating Spam, were, and are, entitled to access to long-term care at veteran hospitals,” said Bruyea, who was released from the Canadian Forces mainly as a result of combat stress associated with serving in the first Gulf War. 

“Shouldn’t those who served in the field hospitals of the Gulf War, the Medak pocket of the former Yugoslavia and the hostile hills around Kandahar deserve the same assistance in both young and old age?” Bruyea asked.

The current network of veteran hospitals was organized in the 1960s. In most cases, the federal government gave contracts to local hospitals, which would establish veteran’s health centres.

Today, health centres including Perley Rideau in Ottawa, Sunnybrook in Toronto and Parkwood in London are one-stop sites, providing focused medical care organized and paid for by Veterans Affairs Canada.

(....)

“If a Canadian Forces veteran needs long-term care, with respect to service-related injury or illness, we will support them in a community bed,” said Janice Summerby, spokesperson for Veterans Affairs. “Veterans Affairs Canada will pay the full cost of their care in a facility — in or near their community, their family and their local social support services.”

However, younger veterans point out that such a standard of care may not always be accessible in local hospitals and other provincial health-care facilities.

“Local community hospitals and their staff really cannot provide the same focused care and attention that is now being received by older veterans in veteran hospitals,” said retired infantry officer Robert Walsh, who has received compensation from Veteran’s Affairs for hearing loss and knee and ankle injuries related to his 14 years of service ....

ipolitics.ca, 28 Jan 12

 

[GAP]

I think costs are the culprits.....here in Wpg the Deer Lodge Hospital was entirely a Verterns Hospital. It now has 1 wing that serves veterns, and rest is community care.

I am not familiar with the process that changed the format, but I vaguely remember some of the arguments.

 

[medicineman]

I have a couple of Second World War vets in the care home attached to my office - IIRC, they get paneled for long term care, can ask for Deer Lodge, but each care home usually has an alottment of beds for VAC, and they flip the bill for them.  I have one patient waiting to get into assisted living, is a vet and is hoping for Deer Lodge, but since we actually have a VAC slot available here, she might end up sliding into that as priority over a non-VAC resident.  I'm still trying to navigate this system right now.

Fact of the matter is, as the First and Second World War vets began to disappear, so did VAC beds in VAC facilities, along with the associated costs (and a lot of the facilities too).  Of course, the military doesn't really have any of it's own beds anywhere since the Rx2000 deal basically got rid of all in patient care at CFHS facilities. When I did my 3's and 5's at NDMC, we still had vets on the floors - often transfered from a vet's home for higher medical treatment.  When I left Gagetown, we had a rental of 3 "virtual beds" at the Oromocto Public Hospital (an old VAC facility and CFH incidentally) for when we closed out the ward in the BMC.  If we needed an admission, those beds had to be coughed up, but of course it wasn't really our facility.

I'm thinking that what will happen is people will end up in a regular public hospital, with VAC flipping the bill for all the above and beyond costs if the needs arise.  Unless of course someone can convince the DGHS and Surg Gen to reopen in patient facilities again...a really expensive pipe dream with high quality imported dope.

:2c:

MM

 

[kstart]

I wish more Civ. hospitals were more up to speed re: things like ptsd-presentation.  It's been my experience that standards are weak and not uniformally standard in that regard.  I also see this as a violation of 'professional ethics' where there would be some obligation to have at least some basic training handling ptsd-presentation (e.g. easy tricks to help guide a person out of flashback, dissociation, opportunties for quick 5 minute intervention to 'bring back, help re-orientate to the 'present moment').

Sometimes Civ. hospital winds up being a "first stop", e.g. "holy crap, it is out of control", and common for others to wait till absolutely cannot wait any longer to move on getting help, treatment.  It's still better than nothing, as Civ hospital can keep you safe, to ride out the crisis of it, the shock of it.  I think from my 'horror experiences' of it, I ought to take more action on that (and now that I'm in a more stablized space, so that I could possibly take that on, a little further) and I know I can do that in part by petitioning Canadian Mental Health Association (since part of their mandate is to do with training, education-- and would also direct to other partner advocacy groups).  I also had a really lousy GP and thankfully got away and found something much better (but I did get CMHA to send an "education package" to them, and hopefully that helps a little more re: other patients who present ptsd, or mental health issue).  I don't know if this is just a local problem here or provincially or whatever, may not be the case everywhere.  But I've had some time to look back (beyond personal issue, to looking at standards) and I don't think it looks right.  And I've had more experience of other helpers in which good training is obvious.  If the heart is not there (and I care less about that), but that the professionalism of applying good training, assessment, response.  It really shouldn't be that complicated.

:2c:  And I do support the urgent need for maintaining and/or expanding, as necessary, the need for specialized hospital programs for OSI/ trauma recovery etc.  I see it as a relatively smaller investment vs. the world of good it can do to help equip others with at least an introduction to good training for dealing with those particular OSIs, etc.  And re-train opportunities as necessary, which can be par for the course.

 

[PuckChaser]

Sure a good way of keeping costs down at veteran's hospitals if they're only allowing the small number of 70-80 year olds that served in Korea in. Our VAC system is so archaic, nothing will fix it but a ground up restructure.