Delivering care

It’s no mystery to veterans in Orland, Farmington or St. Agatha that a trip to the Togus Veterans Affairs Hospital in Augusta is not easily accomplished. So we may all be forgiven for wondering why an independent study was even needed of how hard it is for rural veterans to receive VA care.

As Sen. Olympia Snowe knows, however, studies are the first step to getting positive results. And the results of a study on how VA care is delivered to rural veterans can — and must — serve as the starting point to ensuring Maine’s former military members get the care to which they are entitled.

The study, released Thursday by private consultants, found that nationwide, veterans who live in rural areas often postpone medical care, possibly because getting to the nearest VA hospital is difficult; rural veterans also spend considerably more money to get to hospitals, of course. But the VA itself tracks neither how much time patients spend getting back and forth from VA hospitals, nor how long patients have to wait to get an appointment.

Sen. Snowe has asked Togo West, head of the VA, to detail how he plans to make it easier on rural veterans to get back and forth from the department’s more than 150 hospitals.

Since Maine has only one such hospital — Togus — to cover some 19 million acres’ worth of far-flung veterans in need of medical care, the matter is especially pressing here. So far, groups such as the Disabled American Veterans, through its vans and volunteers, are providing the majority of affordable transportation for rural veterans; that, simply put, is unacceptable. It’s the VA’s job to make sure its facilities and programs are accessible to veterans.

“The report makes clear that we need to step up the number of community care clinics that can augment Togus,” Snowe wrote in a statement. Not only that, but the VA should continue its efforts to use other, nonmilitary medical centers for some care, and should make greater use of its mobile medical van, which is based in Machias.

It’s sad that many services the VA provides, such as cardiac surgery, require trips to Boston; there are hospitals in Maine that can provide such services. It’s worse that so many veterans who need considerably simpler care, such as a checkup, day surgery or continuing care for acute illnesses, are forced to make day-long trips and to stay overnight in the Augusta area, often at their own expense.

Sen. Snowe and the rest of Congress must give the VA the resources it will need to ensure rural veterans can get the care to which they are entitled. The VA, in turn, must come up with sincere plans that will directly address the needless expense and difficulty of getting to Maine’s one VA hospital.