At a town hall meeting at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Columbus Wednesday, local veterans told the director of the Veterans Affairs hospital in Jackson they were angry about the treatment they’d received from staff there.
“I’m trying to get the VA to give me hearing aids, so (my doctors) schedule me a hearing test,” Air Force veteran Lawrence McIntire said. “Halfway through my hearing test, the woman comes over to me and she says, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hearing’ — really nasty and doggish-like. No respect, whatsoever.”
Upon hearing McIntire’s story, Dr. David Walker, director of the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center in Jackson, immediately had his staff take McIntire’s name and information so he could contact the veteran later and get him the care and benefits he needed. He also said he wanted to know the name of the woman who talked to him.
“Everyone deserves to be treated with respect,” Walker said.
Walker, along with director of the Veterans Benefits Administration Regional Office in Jackson Darryl Brady, specifically held the meeting to hear stories like McIntire’s. They wanted to meet with veterans face-to-face, take their questions and try to correct whatever problems veterans had run into while trying to get care.
Walker and Brady are both veterans themselves, as is Mississippi’s First District Congressman Trent Kelly, who was also on-hand at the meeting to speak with veterans.
“The people who need help the most generally are the last ones to have it,” Kelly said. “The warriors who have seen the most don’t want help because it’s not part of their warrior ethos. … They don’t want to tell anyone that they need help.”
Listening to veterans
Walker has been holding town hall meetings like this across Mississippi over the last several months asking for veterans’ feedback, telling them about the changes he has made to the Jackson hospital since taking over as director and trying to get more veterans registered to receive benefits.
About 250,000 veterans live in the state, Walker said. Only about 40,000 are registered with the VA center in Jackson.
“Basically there are veterans in Mississippi that have earned the care, but they’re not signed up,” Walker said. “I hope from this that we can also get the word out for folks who want to get their care. That’s why we’re here.”
Walker and Brady spoke with the handful of veterans at the meeting for more than 1.5 hours. Their concerns seemed to be primarily about their treatment from VA staff and the reputation the Jackson VA hospital had cultivated over the years as being unhelpful and unfriendly.
Several of them had registered instead with the Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center in Alabama, which is closer for Golden Triangle residents than Jackson and which some attending the town hall said has a better reputation for helpfulness among veterans. Unfortunately, being registered in Tuscaloosa means they can’t use Mississippi clinics — like the one in Columbus.
Walker said he doesn’t get to decide which clinics served which patients. Those are decisions made at a national level. However, he said, he thinks it will change soon since many veterans living close to state borders have the same problem.
But Walker has been working to change the culture at the Jackson center, making it a better experience for veterans who get care there and for the staff who work with them. He’s been working directly with “front line” staff who see veterans on a daily basis, he said, to make sure they’re friendly, competent and eager to help patients.
He and Brady encouraged the veterans to report to the center with the names of the employees they meet with the next time they’re treated poorly at the VA hospital, along with the date and time the incident occurred. Both said they would work to remove employees with multiple complaints made against them.
Patient-centered approach
Walker also has begun working on a patient-centered care approach when working with veterans. Instead of having doctors or nurse practitioners tell patients what their problems are, Walker wants medical professionals to work with patients to set goals the patients want — things like living to see births of grandchildren and staying healthy enough to make it to graduations and other events.
At the end of the meeting, veterans present seemed happy with the answers they’d received.
“I’m very hopeful that they’re going to be making some changes at the Va in Jackson,” said Columbus resident and Air Force veteran Sharon Dollarhide, who is registered with the VA hospital in Tuscaloosa. “Maybe they could persuade me to move my registration back to Mississippi.”
McIntire, too, was encouraged after hearing Walker and Brady. He was particularly glad to hear that he could go to the VA Center and complain about employees who mistreated him.
“It really made me feel like America feels a responsibility toward injured vets,” he said. “Or veterans period.”
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