U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (left center) and Rep. Eugene Vindman (right center) met with veterans Monday in Stafford County. (Photo courtesy of Vindman’s office)
Rep. Vindman: Meeting about VA clinic wait times ‘productive’
After meeting with leaders from the Fredericksburg VA Health Care Center on Monday afternoon, Rep. Eugene Vindman said the groundwork has been laid for his continued collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Democrat, whose 7th District includes the Fredericksburg area, has been critical of the Spotsylvania County facility’s staffing levels and has been told by several veterans that they’ve experienced issues with the operation in its first several months.
But, in a statement issued Wednesday, Vindman said that the meeting he and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., had at the clinic was productive.
“I shared what I heard directly from local veterans at a roundtable earlier that day about staffing, access to care, and communication, and we discussed concrete steps the VA and my office can take together to address these challenges,” Vindman said in the statement.
He said he appreciated the facility’s leaders “coming to the table and acknowledging that too many veterans are still facing unreasonable wait times and delays.
“I feel confident that we will keep fighting, together, to make sure this facility is fully equipped to serve every veteran who depends on it.”
Before meeting with VA officials, Vindman and Kaine held a roundtable with veterans to discuss their concerns with government healthcare.
Ashley Carothers, an Air Force veteran who lives in Woodbridge, said health program cancellations are harming the delivery of care. Carothers, who has worked for the VA, said a lot of female veterans don’t seek out the agency’s care initially.
“And so when they enter that door and now they’re being told that, ‘Oh, actually, your program has been canceled.’ Think about what that does to them,” she said at the meeting at the Howell Branch library in southern Stafford County. “We’re harming veterans instead of helping them.”
She said she’s been receiving care from a VA facility in Washington, D.C., but was excited by the opportunity to instead see medical professionals in Spotsylvania.
But when she called to get in, she was asked what her appointment wait time was in D.C.
“I was like, ‘Well, depends, but two to three months, sometimes six, just depends on what it is,’” she said. “And they were like, ‘Well, we’re having trouble staffing down here, so you might as well just stay up there.’”
Carrie Moulton, a Navy veteran who lives in King George County, said her husband, Christopher, who also served in the Navy, has had a medicine issue.
He asked a VA doctor for a medication that he’s been on for more than a decade in the military, but the new provider prescribed another drug.
Then, Carrie Moulton said, “He has a slew of issues from it, and now they’re like, ‘But you have to wait four months to come back in.’ And you don’t get to talk to somebody. You get a letter in the mail. So, it’s too much of a gap. There’s got to be a better way.”
Michael Dunlap, a Marine veteran who lives in Fredericksburg, said he’s had inconsistent VA care in Spotsylvania because of staffing issues.
“I’ve had four primary-care providers in the last year,” he said.
VA appointment cancelations are a problem, too, according to veterans.
“I’m one of the people that they canceled my appointment while I was driving there,” said Katharine Cunningham-Carlot, an Army veteran who lives in Fredericksburg.
Another visual illustration of the lack of care at the Spotsylvania facility is the lack of cars in the parking lot, Vindman said.
“The VA facility, you can see it from the road,” the congressman told the roundtable. “And one of the things that really bothers me from [Interstate] 95 is to see that empty parking lot.”
Kaine said one issue with VA healthcare is that the agency says it wants to cut tens of thousands of jobs while also staffing facilities that just opened.
“It’s just a math problem,” the senator told those gathered.
Vindman said the Spotsylvania facility would be fully staffed at 933 employees, and it opened last year with only one-third of the necessary workers.
“They’re still one-third short-staffed a year and a half later into it,” he said. “And so, to me, that is completely unacceptable. At the same time, they’re talking about cutting staff.”
VA officials maintained previously, however, that staffing was on schedule at the Spotsylvania clinic and aligned with the number of veterans seen at the operation.
Kaine also said caps on VA salaries make it more likely that potential VA providers could get better pay in the private sector.
“So that’s something that Congress could fix in a defense bill or adjust,” the senator said.
