By Peter S. Gaytan

 

Access to quality healthcare is a concern of many veterans who don’t live near a major VA medical center. Out of the 22 million veterans, about 6.1 million live in rural areas. Rural, as defined by the U.S. Census, is an area that is not urbanized and has less than 2,500 persons. The mission of the Veterans Health Administration Office of Rural Health (ORH) is to improve access and quality of care for enrolled rural and highly rural vets.

 

Of the 3.4 million rural veterans enrolled in the VA system, nearly 43 percent are from rural and highly rural areas and many suffer from a service-connected disability. Men and women from rural and highly rural areas comprise almost a third of the vets who served in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Many of these veterans returned to their rural communities. As Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson recently said, “…We need to be as good at taking care of our veterans as we are at creating them. This is especially true considering the many veterans who have served, or will have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan. These men and women, including those who come from rural areas of our states, are the backbone of our national security. They have sacrificed much to preserve our freedoms.”

 

The Office of Rural Health was created in 2007. To better provide service to enrolled rural veterans, there are programs that use telemedicine (e.g., exchanging medical information via electronic communication, remote monitoring of vital signs, teleconferencing, and more), although more such programs are needed. ORH also has developed new clinical facilities, supplies transportation to health facilities where needed, has expanded home-based primary care, trained Community-Based Outpatient Clinic providers, offered rural outreach and health literacy programs, and expanded mental health programs into rural areas. ORH has seen an increase in the number of patients seen in health and mental health visits.

 

How the VA provides quality healthcare to rural veterans is changing. But as Representative Mike Conaway has said, “As we transition to more locally delivered services, we want veterans to know we’re not trying to renege on promises we have made to them.”

 

For more information on The Office or Rural Health, go to: www.ruralhealth.va.gov.

 

Peter S. Gaytan is the author of For Service To Your Country – Updated Edition: The Essential Guide to Getting the Veterans’ Benefits You’ve Earned (Citadel, 2011), available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. He has served as an advocate in securing and protecting the earned benefits of America’s veterans for more than a decade. Gaytan is the Executive Director of the American Legion, the largest veterans service organization in America.