‘Centers of Excellence’ for veterans

By Garry J. Augustine

Unquestionably, the system for providing healthcare to more than 6 million of America’s 22 million veterans needs to be reformed and strengthened. But some ideas being put forth will be bad for veterans, including one plan that sounds benign at face value but, upon closer inspection, is revealed to create fewer options for veterans who most need the VA healthcare system. This proposal would shrink VA healthcare down into a small number of “Centers of Excellence” and move the bulk of veterans’ care into the private sector.

VA already operates a number of “Centers of Excellence” focused on post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide prevention, prosthetics, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, geriatrics and vision loss, to name a few.  Each of these “Centers of Excellence” is fully integrated with a VA medical center to ensure that veterans have access to a full continuum of physical and mental health care services.  However, some politicians and pundits have proposed downsizing VA from a comprehensive healthcare system to only a smaller number of “Centers of Excellence” that focus only on specific war wounds or service-connected injuries and illnesses like PTSD, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injuries, and amputations. For all other care, veterans would be forced to turn to the private sector.

There are two major problems with this idea: one, it would actually result in less access to healthcare for veterans who choose and rely on VA and two, it would diminish overall quality by making it much harder to coordinate care for severely injured or ill veterans.

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