By Dorothy Meindok
The Post Newspaper Veterans Consultant
Director of Community Relations for VA’s Tri-West, Glenn Gray says he met the veteran leaders from the Southeast Texas organizations at the Galveston/Houston, Texas Veterans Town Hall a couple months ago. Gray flew in all the way from Virginia to the town hall. Then, he came back again this past Thursday with Houston VA’s Sonja White, RN, Clinical Program Manager for the Care in the Community Program to follow-up and make more progress, recognizing that in several cases things have fallen through the cracks, especially when it comes to providers and billing.
VHA’s Community Care Program’s billing issues have caused the VA to lose much needed medical providers that serve veterans as contractors in the community when the VA is overbooked, or the veteran meets the requirements of the Mission Act necessitating outside of VA care in rural areas like Galveston County.
I share below a television news link from Beaumont’s 12 News where veterans, Seth Wells and Damian Bennett, who headed the Beaumont town hall, met with representatives of TriWest Health Care and the Veterans Affairs Community Care Network at the American Legion Post 33 in Beaumont to help VHA representatives better understand and identify the disconnects. Since the community care program is administered from our Houston hospital and affects all veterans in the region, these forward developments and working together will benefit every veteran that receives healthcare from MEDVAMC. One need is in educating the providers on how VA billing works and where to send the bills. Some of the programs are so similarly named that confusion sets in, not just for providers but also within the VA and veteran communities, i.e. Tri-West vs. Tri-Care, the former covers veterans in community care and the latter is a program that normally provides coverage for DOD retirees and dependents.
“Some of the discussion surrounds increasing the providers’ claims windows to 365 days as opposed to the current regulations where providers only have 180 days to submit the veterans’ doctors’ bills to be paid.” Bennett of V4V said.
He adds, “If billing errors happen and the 180-day window expires, the doctors don’t get paid, and this has caused providers to leave the VA TriWest network.”
Seth Wells, American Legion 33 Commander tackled the issues rural veterans face in receiving reliable transportation to medical appointments. “For veterans that are solely relying on Tri-West or Tri-Care the access to that transportation is so expensive with gas and insurance especially those that use wheelchairs,” Wells said, “This is a great start, it’s appreciated and we are encouraged to keep helping, working together, and apprising our veteran community of the progress as well as letting them know how important it is to keep trying and never give up.”
Earlier this year, federal & local community members, including our elected officials and veterans community members from all over Southeast Texas gathered for a series of Texas Veterans Town Halls to try and bridge the communication breakdown between veteran & military families and the Veterans Health Administration. I agree with Seth Wells, this is a great start. Thank you to all involved and as things progress, I’ll keep you posted from right here at The Post Newspaper .
Dorothy Meindok is The Post Newspaper’s Veterans Consultant. Ms. Meindok served her nation in the United States Navy and is currently a practicing lawyer advocating for our nation’s veterans. Her column appears on Sundays.
