Women's care at VA lacks staff
New clinic can't open; another is sidelined
Last January, the VA Boston Healthcare System held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Brockton VA campus to celebrate a new treatment center for female veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress and substance abuse disorders. Guest speakers hailed the innovative program as the first of its kind. Cameras flashed and people applauded. But after the crowds dispersed, the unit remained dark.
As of last week - nine months after the ribbon-cutting - the center is still not open.
That is just one of the issues that worry a group overseeing women's healthcare at local VA medical facilities. The group is also concerned about the women's clinic at the Brockton VA campus. The clinic, which serves 500 patients from across Southeastern Massachusetts, recently closed temporarily.
Mary Jane Letizia, the former veterans agent for the town of Rockland and a member of a VA advisory committee on women's health issues, wrote a letter to the head of the VA Boston Healthcare System, stating her concerns.
"As a woman veteran, I feel it would be disastrous for this clinic to close its door," she wrote, in a letter dated Aug. 17. "It is a very safe and comforting environment for women to have their medical needs met."
The new unit for returning female soldiers is also essential, she said in an interview. "These girls are coming back from Iraq . . . and they've got real problems. They really need this. . . . It's really sad."
VA officials say finding adequate staffing is the problem in both cases.
After the ribbon-cutting in January, "what has happened is that we've run into difficulty in recruiting and hiring," said VA spokeswoman Diane Keefe. The eight-bed residential rehab unit for women with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse problems will eventually open, she said.
Finding suitable female mental health specialists to staff the unit around the clock has been a challenge, said Keefe. "We're not going to open a unit, not until we have the right staffing with the right credentials to do it," she said.
She also said there are no plans to close the Women's Outpatient Unit. It was shut down only temporarily because three main staff members, two program coordinators, and its clinical director left around the same time, and no one had been hired to take their place, she said.
"It's in a period of transition," she said. "When we have our staffing back to the level that we need to be, we'll move their care back" to the clinic.
Meanwhile, women can still get the same care as they always did at the Brockton VA, said Keefe, but in a different building, not too far from the Women's Outpatient Unit. And progress is being made on replacing those three key staffers, according to Keefe: A VA nurse has been promoted to serve as the acting head coordinator of women's care.
"She's working hard to get all clinical and support staff they need to provide care in that location there," said Keefe.
No date has been set, but Keefe said the Women's Unit should be reopening "soon."
"We're not closing anything. We just want to give everyone safe care, and provide adequate staffing," said Keefe.
Meanwhile, a meeting will be planned to discuss the future of the VA Boston Healthcare System and discuss consolidating the Bedford VA services at the Brockton campus. That proposal is part of a larger restructuring that has been in the works since 2002.
The fourth and final meeting of the panel charged with restructuring the region's four US Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers will be held Sept. 17 in the campus center ballroom at the University of Massachusetts at Boston from 1 to 6:30 p.m.
Four options will be presented in detail, and the public will be welcome to comment on them. (Under all four proposals, the Brockton VA hospital would remain open.) For those seeking to submit comment on the proposals online, Keefe said, "this is their last opportunity." The public will also be welcome to give testimony at the meeting, she said.
As for the problem filling staff vacancies, said Keefe, anyone interested in applying for one of the several open staff slots should contact the VA network.
Patients have been identified for treatment in the eight-bed residential ward, she said, but "we can't admit people to this ward until we're staffed properly. . . . We have to recruit the right people . . . and the right amount of people."
Comments relevant to the upcoming hearing may be submitted online at www.va.gov/cares, or via mail to VA Cares Studies - Boston Study, PO Box 1427 Washington Grove, MD 20880-1427. Anyone interested in applying for positions in the women's treatment units should contact the human resources department at 774-826-1105.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com. 