Questions about health care for active duty military personnel at Fort Leonard Wood, spouses and retirees came up repeatedly at an April 28 forum on veterans issues sponsored by the Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber President Steve Lynch noted that General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital is no longer able to provide obstetrical and childbirth services, even for active duty soldiers or wives.
“One of the major problems that Fort Leonard Wood seems to be having is they are short-staffed,” Lynch said. “The hospital commander said in March that she’s trying unsuccessfully to recruit civilian doctors since medical professionals don’t want to move to this area. Can anything be done by state veterans’ officials to help Fort Leonard Wood recruit civilian doctors for their staff to make it possible to handle not just active duty but also retiree patient loads?”
Panelists said they weren’t sure what could be done.
Stanley Baughn, the director of veterans’ service programs for the Missouri Veterans Commission, said that’s a common problem throughout rural Missouri and said some of his agency’s seven veterans’ homes also have trouble recruiting qualified nurses.
“That would have to be a state initiative to come up with a grant program or something like that,” Baughn said. “That’s the only thing I can think of that they could use to sweeten the pot, so to speak, to help health care professionals want to move to this area.”
Dalton Wright, chairman of the Missouri Military Preparedness and Enhancement Commission, also serves on the board of St. John’s Hospital and suggested that a partnership with the private sector could help.
“I don’t have any knowledge, but I would think maybe there could be some kind of partnering relationship that could occur with the Leonard Wood hospital and possibly some of the providers in the area,” Wright said. “I don’t know if there would be an issue there, but with as much privatization as there is here … that might be something we could address with Phelps (County Regional Medical Center in Rolla) and/or St. John’s to see if there is some way they could help staff or provide health care in those critical areas.”
Baughn said partnerships already exist between the VA and the University of Missouri Medical Center and suggested that something similar might be possible for active duty service members and their families.
“They go back and forth between the VA health care system to the university there, and that’s a very productive and very good partnership,” Baughn said. “As Mr. Wright said, that might be a profitable vein to mine, so to speak, partnerships between private and governmental hospitals trading back specialties.”
Lynch said he liked that idea.
“Everything starts with an idea, and health care is extremely important and certainly would be an important hook ... to keep retirees close around here if we had not only the facilities but also the personnel that were there to help,” Lynch said.
Lynch said he received numerous questions from audience members about access to medical care for veterans.
“Why do veterans and retirees have to travel to Columbia for tests or procedures that can be done at the VA clinic rather than General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital?” Lynch asked.
That’s due to limited facilities and a limited mission for the VA clinic at Fort Leonard Wood, said Denise Boyd, one of two military benefits counselors assigned by the VA to Fort Leonard Wood.
“For the veterans and retirees, the clinic is set up only to do some primary care and they take care of our benefits-delivery-at-discharge program, examinations as well as some of the pre-discharge program examinations,” Boyd said. “They have an agreement with the hospital that the hospital will do so many tests for exams, but there’s no agreement with the hospital that they will provide anything else.”
Specialized medical tests may be done in Columbia because the testing facilities aren’t available locally, she said.
Baughn agreed that transportation to VA hospitals is a significant problem in a rural state like Missouri where many veterans live far away from the closest veterans’ facility able to handle major medical care.
“If you talk to any veterans group anywhere around the state and you ask what the number one topic is, it’s going to be medical and transportation to medical services,” Baughn said. “A statewide transportation system would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, probably, to administer.”
Baughn thanked the Disabled American Veterans organization and other volunteer groups that provide transportation to veterans who need to get to medical appointments.
“Unfortunately, at this point in time, economically there’s not a lot we can do about it right now,” Baughn said.