In an effort to increase access to care, VA Secretary Bob McDonald recently launched a national recruitment campaign designed to bring needed medical professionals into the VA.
“At VA, we have the most inspiring mission and the greatest clients of any healthcare system in the world. That’s exactly the message I’m going to share as I speak with health care professionals and students about the value of serving at VA,” said Secretary McDonald. “We have taken action to get Veterans off of wait lists and into clinics in the short-term, but in the long-term, in order to provide timely access to care, we need to build capacity by hiring more clinicians.”
See more of what Secretary McDonald recently had to say to medical school students and staff:
“We need the best doctors and nurses serving Veterans, and that is why I will be out recruiting, leveraging the existing relationships and affiliations VA has with many academic institutions, and talking directly to medical professionals about joining us to fulfill our exceptional mission of caring for those who ‘shall have borne the battle,'” McDonald said.
Meet one of the doctors currently working at VA, Navy Veteran Dr. Chan Park.
Read more about the national recruiting effort here. Find out more about working at VA at http://www.vacareers.va.gov/.
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It is impressive to see the VA using state of the art simulation training to train their medical staff to service veterans.
I would be willing to train for free, any number of psychologists to learn the Rewind Techniqe for PTSD treatment. The fastest, enduring and availble for groups as for individuals.
See an example ,try it out if you have had a life threatening event : http://youtu.be/cTaY9jC1TEU
Before all this new concern on finding doctors, I would regularly check the number of physician, NP and PA job openings at the VA. Nationally, the number would hold at about 500. Now all of a sudden they want untold scores more of practitioners and they believe they will somehow achieve this in my lifetime (I am in my late 60’s).
First, the facts are that the veteran population in this country will decline by about 25% over the next 11 years. Any medical school graduate who has rudimentary math skills would realize that the need for physicians will also follow a downward trend.
Who currently fills the ranks of physicians at the VA? If they are young, it is mostly foreign born and educated. Making a hundred fifty to two hundred thousand a year in this country, as an internist, compared to staying in India to practice, is much better than the top tier of doctors there who make around $23,000 in US Dollars. Although they must serve a residency here, there options are limited to mostly hospitals, urgent care facilities and the VA.
The other doctor who fills the VA roles is the older private single practitioner who is being driven out of private practice by Obamacare. He or she can no longer justify the expense of malpractice insurance, dictated fee schedules, regulations and required computer equipment. Of course, 40 hour work weeks, great benefits, and in many cases weekends off is attractive to the this classification of doctor who has paid off their student loans and now wants to take it easy.
The reality is many US medical school graduates serve their residency at VA hospitals. Why do so few ever go on to practice at the VA? The answer is simple. They have seen the VA culture, the politics, the sometimes silly requirements they must follow, and the biggest of all is they will spend a good portion of their day sitting typing on a computer screen.
No, it won’t be anytime soon we will see a large uptick in the number of doctors.
Obamacare did not force the private doctors out of practice, the HMOs and other large organizations have been doing that for YEARS slowing building up their groups and refusing billing and underpaying the private doctors through their supposedly independent insurance plans…..
Pay for their medical degree and have the doctors and nurses pay off that loan by working for the VA system. This would be the first step. Second, the salaries must be competitive. Third, have the military fill certain vacancies. They serve at bases throughout the world, why not assign these military personnel to VA FACILITIES? fourth, why we are rebuilding the VA system, if there is a shortage of a speciality doctor such as a GI doctor or a dermatologist, allow the veteran to see a doctor outside the VA system. And lastly, update the VA facilities, not only building but furniture and equipment .
I am the nurse case manager for the Department of Aging, Frederick County Maryland.
I instituted nurseing observations into the Meals On Wheels programs to assist in keeping people in their homes.
Google.com, Linkedin have more of my credentials.
I was also published in Advance for Nurses in June 2003 publication in regards to the policies I brought in.
I am interested in your programs.
One way to recruit much needed mental health professionals is accept psychologists that have held a professional license in their state for five years of more regardless of if they had an APA accredited internship while a student. An academic requirement arbitrarily set by the VA should not trump the rigorous requirements of a state license exam process. The irony is there are professionals who are the supervising psychologists for doctoral student interns in APA approved programs who the VA would not hire because that same supervising psychologist did not themselves complete an APA approved internship. While when hiring a freshly minted psychologist the internship requirement makes sense, it makes absolutely no sense when considering someone who has been out of school for many years and been a successful licensed clinician for 5, 10, 15 years of more.
Whenever I go to the ER at the VA they always have only 1 doctor working causing for long waits. I hope this van be fixed as well. Also specialized surgeons are needed. I know they pay less than regular doctors on the street but if the doctor is in school on government loans and grants, give them the option of working for the VA for 5 or 6 years and having their loans paid for.