VA Secretary Recommends Closure of Four Rural Colorado Clinics

Description: On Tuesday March 8, 2022 The VA Administration held a meeting with Otero County Officials and Veteran Advocacy Groups and recommended the closure of the La Junta, Lamar, Salida, and Burlington VA Clinics. (Photo and Video by: Adrian Hart)


Published: 03/10/2022
Byline: Sanchez

VA Secretary Recommends Closure of Rural Colorado Clinics

By Joseph A Sanchez

A pre-covid, 2019 marketing analysis by an independent contractor has resulted in a recommendation to close four rural Colorado VA Health Clinics. 
 
La Junta, Lamar, Salida and Burlington are all on the chopping block, and could close sometime between 2023-2026, according to Michael Kilmer, Director of the VA Colorado Health System. Should implementation not occur, the entire plan could potentially be dismissed and the various clinics remain open, according to Kilmer.
 
"Most of you are not going to like the information I have," Kilmer said, "This is a recommendation and not final."
 
VA Director Kilmer indicated that his office had been bound by a non-disclosure agreement until early this month. Kilmer said that he brought the bad news in person to give correct information and said he did not want panic to ensue relative to potential loss of services and potential job losses.  
 
Chief VA Strategist Jonathan Kerr indicated that there are three basic events occurring relative to VA resources and the recommendations being rendered. Market growth, market transition or market closure. Although the name of the independent contractor was not mentioned, Kerr said "the VA paid a lot of money to come to the conclusions regarding what markets should stay open and which ones should be closed."
 
According to Kerr, Burlington, La Junta, Lamar and Salida were all on the contractor's report as facilities that would be best to close and address veterans care in these regions utilizing other channels.
 
 
"As Michael said, these are not final," Kerr said.
 
Passing along bad news may not be the worst trouble The Veteran’s Affairs Office for Eastern Colorado is facing as there are 127 vacant VA health care positions in Colorado, according to Kilmer.
 
American Legion local chapter leader Tom Flores reminded the full room in the Otero County Courthouse that the when the Ft. Lyon VA Hospital in Bent County was closed by the VA residents and veterans of this region were told that no further cuts into veteran health care would be forthcoming.
 
"This is not a done deal" said Flores, who indicated that Colorado American Legion representation was fighting on a national level. "Ralph Ozzello is in Washington, right now and Paul Dillard gave testimony before Congress today," Flores said.
 
A year-long period of public input now begins regarding the implementation of Colorado's version of "The Mission Act," national legislation that was signed by the Trump administration in an attempt to improve the health care provided to our nation's military veterans. 
 
Otero County Veteran's Services Officer Jay Scott said he believes closure of the VA Clinics is inevitable, but he hopes that the closures can be delayed as the VA is struggling to find doctors and hospitals to form partnerships with.
 
Scott said. "It's broken. Community Care is broken." Among the problems, Scott sees is an unreasonable length of time, 4-6 weeks for the average VA authorization for local treatment.
 
Scott said he believed that things needed to evolve, morph, and change. He said that the piece of the VA services called Community Care is broken and in serious need of attention. We need Healthcare services for our Veterans that are streamlined and simple, according to Scott. 
 
VA Director Kilmer spoke of virtual care as one viable alternative for the future of VA Health Care in Colorado.  Kilmer said that at present veteran urban dwellers are more comfortable with tele-healthcare as compared to rural veteran citizens who are not as readily linked to broadband internet.
 
He alluded to the fact that fewer veterans in rural communities would be apt to utilize tele-healthcare, but perhaps placing providers in rural areas and allowing them to provide tele-healthcare services to urban users as well as face to face healthcare with rural, technologically inept veterans is a possible solution.
 
Action 22 Chief Operations Officer, Brian McCain said, "When this gets published to the federal register (3/14/22), and it's federalregister.gov, I think that organizations, whether it be a board of county commissioners, all the way down to individuals need to comment on that. Let them know what you think and what maybe some solutions are, such as delaying the closure of the clinic until 2030."
 
"There were numerous times that something like this would come up and it gets passed into law, and they're like, "we didn't have any comments," and part of that is that people do not think that their comments count, but they actually do."
 
"They go in and they read those and track those and if they go in and they have 300 submissions from this area they're going to notice that," McCain said.
 
Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center CEO Lynn Crowell said, "Even if they have to come up with a new payment model for those hospitals willing to partner with VA, and stand in that gap, then let's come up to that new level or new model." 
 
He said, "In our community we're 85% medicare/medicaid... If there's some sort of exemption that the hospital could qualify for then it's willing to provide the bricks and mortar, but we're also willing to provide the personnel."
 
Kilmer responded with, "What he's talking about would take a regulatory change..." 
 
"You'd have to move the mountain, but if you don't move the mountain, there's not going to be any mountain there," Crowell said.
 
Various American Legion and local medical providers encouraged local veterans to enroll in the Veteran's Affairs Healthcare System, so their numbers count during this time when rural Colorado VA Clinics are at risk of closure. (ENROLL HERE)
 
The public comment period begins Monday, March 14, 2022.
 
Exclusive Video Coverage of the meeting can be seen here: https://youtu.be/X732d-2oDT0
 
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