The GAO said the VA’s system for assessing whether it has enough mental health community care team providers “needs to be reconsidered.”
HAMPTON, Va. — New questions are being raised about the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its ability to provide veterans with the mental health care they need.
The National Library of Medicine reports that 14% to 16% of U.S. military personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from PTSD or depression.
Providing Veterans with timely access to this care has been recognized as VA’s highest priority.
But a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the department is struggling to meet growing demand.
The document states that the way VA tracks mental health appointments in its community care networks “may lead to incomplete and potentially misleading assessments of network adequacy.”
“It makes them look better than reality is, so they’re probably missing cases where there are delays in care, and those delays in care can have really bad outcomes and consequences for veterans,” said Alyssa Handrup, director of GAO’s health care team.
The report goes on to say: “This poses a risk to VA’s ability to fully assess how adequate community care networks are to meet veterans’ needs, including mental health care.”
Handrup, in an interview with 13News Now on Thursday, said there is room for improvement to help the VA better assess whether there are enough mental health care providers in an area to provide care to veterans.
“The way we evaluate performance needs to be reconsidered,” she said.
