For veterans in rural areas, health care can be a battle

For veterans in rural areas, health care can be a battle

Associated Press
Posted: Sunday, June 12, 2011

WASHINGTON • Frank Munk earned his veteran's medical benefits more than four decades ago in Quang Tri province, a hard-fought, bloody piece of ground in Vietnam. Yet he doesn't always choose to use them.

Munk, 64, a truck mechanic from western Kansas, instead spends $2,500 out of his own pocket on a private doctor for such things as hearing tests. It's either that or drive nearly 300 miles to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Wichita or Denver.

"I can't afford to take two days off," said Munk, who's self-employed. "The VA care is getting cost-prohibitive for people in the rural areas because of the time, and a lot of them can't drive themselves."

Other veterans who live beyond America's cities and suburbs share Munk's dilemma. Long distances and restrictive rules have become obstacles to health care for many of the more than 3 million rural veterans enrolled in the VA health system. They account for 41 percent of enrollees.
But the agency's effort to aid rural veterans has other problems as well. An April internal VA audit found that it couldn't determine whether much of the money spent on rural health care in recent years did any good.

The VA Office of Inspector General, the agency's internal watchdog, concluded that the VA "lacked reasonable assurance" that its use of $273 million of the $533 million in rural health funding it received in 2009 and 2010 had "improved access and quality of care" for veterans.

"We basically couldn't tell how effective each of these projects was because of the lack of project performance measures," said Gary Abe, a director in the inspector general's office who oversaw the audit. "The report's message was the VA couldn't determine if it was money well spent."
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For veterans in rural areas health care can be a battle