Are Private Sector Providers Ready to Care for Vets? Not Really!

As Congress moves ahead with plans to outsource more and more veteran health care to the private sector, three high-profile studies should urge lawmakers to pump the brakes. The studies, published in recent weeks by RAND Corporation, Federal Practitioner, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, spotlight serious flaws in private-sector veterans’ care compared with the VHA, from suicide prevention to overall health care. In so doing, the reports underscore a critical fact: Despite their best intentions, few private-sector physicians, hospitals, mental health, and other health-care professionals have the knowledge, experience, and skill to provide the level of care veterans need and deserve.

Perhaps the most damning of those studies comes from the RAND Corporation. In a report entitled “Ready or Not?” researchers examined whether private-sector health professionals in New York state had the “capacity” and “readiness” to deal with that state’s 800,000 veterans in need of care. Such patients, the study noted, are on average older, sicker, poorer, and far more complex than the ordinary civilian-sector patient.

The conclusion? Only 2 percent of New York state providers met RAND’s “final definition as ready to provide timely and quality care to veterans in the community.”  Read More