Veteran's Town Hall touches on COVID's 'end,' changes coming to VA
May 12—MORGANTOWN — While President Joe Biden signed a bill declaring the end COVID-19 public health emergency in April, the emergency officially expired at 12 a.m., May 11.
With the end of the public health emergency, many of the restrictions and extensions the public health sector put in place will end or change. For officials at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, it is still unclear what exactly these changes will be.
Thursday night, senior officials from the VA joined with local veterans for their annual town hall meeting, where veterans could voice their concerns or problems they're having with the VA system. The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency was a topic around which the conversation centered.
"For the last three plus year's we've all been challenged. We've all been affected. There are so many changes going on it is constant," Clarksburg VA Associate Director David DiGiacomo said. "Basically things are going back to how they were pre-pandemic. We're probably going to be going backwards as fast as we're going forwards. There's a lot of guidance coming out and it's changing every day."
Major changes that are already announced is that the beneficiary travel reimbursement will have to be submitted within 30 days, during the pandemic that timeframe was drastically extended.
Also, the VA's vaccination program was extended to dependents and spouses during the pandemic. That will return to being only available to beneficiaries.
The pandemic hit the VA just as hard as it hit other health agencies in the areas of staff retention. One veteran at the town hall said he hasn't seen the same doctor twice in the last three years.
The Clarksburg VA Chief of Staff Gerson Teran said that they have experienced high turnover in the last several years, but are working to become an attractive employment destination for medical professionals.
"Physicians are tired and a lot of them are retiring or quitting. We're bringing in new people all the time in the institution. If it were up to me, I would have a steady group of physicians to take care of you the rest of your life," Teran said. "We're doing our best to achieve that, but there are a lot of issues involved with that and the retention of physicians is a part of that."
Many veterans who attended had concerns regarding clerical issues or communication problems on various levels within the VA, such as transferring records between community care to the VA or just getting ahold of the right person to help resolve an issue.
Nearly all of those questions were fielded by John Seti, the veterans experience officer at the Clarksburg facility. Seti handed out business cards to concerned veterans and assured them he'd help resolve their issues.
To him, the face-to-face environment of these town halls is paramount to making sure veterans are taken care of in the best way possible.
"It almost seems insensitive when they get into our call tree, and they have to go from this area to this area to the other — I'm working in our hospital now to combat that," Seti said. "We want the first person you talk to, to be the person who gets you where you're going."
Also in attendance Thursday night was Danny Henry, the public contact coach out of the Huntington VA office. He's been working since November to make sure that veterans in West Virginia are getting their full benefits as easily as possible. Thursday he had a mobile registration station where vets could sign up for benefits on the spot.
This included registration for the new PACT Act, which expanded VA benefits to cover exposure to toxic materials and fumes while serving in the Vietnam War, Desert Storm and Desert Shield, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were launched during the George W. Bush administration. Henry and his office have been working to streamline the process for West Virginia vets.
"Every hand is at the plow right now, nationwide. We have four VA medical centers in West Virginia. West Virginia is blessed, we're lucky," Henry said. "January to March, that quarter we broke every record in the state of West Virginia with the number of veterans we reached. It's not enough, that's why we're out here right now.
"We want to make sure you guys and gals are getting the help you need."
For information about veteran's resources or contacts, visit www.va.gov/contact-us/.
Reach David Kirk at 304-367-2522 or by email at dkirk@timeswv.com.
