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Mial notes that the Greenville center emphasizes women’s health care, reflecting contemporary military demographics. Women make up about 15% of active duty members, and also form the fastest growing patient population. If at one time they received largely the same type of care as male veterans, these days, “the VA is trying to expand its services for women,” Mial says.
Mental health services have an important place and are embedded in a patient’s primary care. Indeed, with 20 service members committing suicide every day across the United States, it is considered a top priority. Yet it’s not always the symptom veterans seek relief for. They may come to the VA for help with ringing in their ears (a frequent complaint), diabetes, or other concern. During screening they may reveal problems sleeping, with their families, or with depression.
The benefit for them, and for all vets in the area, is access to life- saving care. About 70 percent of vets who take their own lives haven’t visited a VA center. Changing that dynamic is a key goal of the Greenville center. As an example of the innovative approach they’re using, the center formed a distinctive partnership with the City of Greenville to create housing for homeless veterans. The Honor Ridge program is expected to grow.
Online services expand the reach, too. Telemedicine, which allows real-time remote consultations, along with an all-online service called My HealtheVet, can bring more care, to more places, and even into the veteran’s home.
My HealtheVet lets veterans look at their records, make appointments, refill prescriptions, and even talk with a provider
via secure email. Mial uses the service for her own medical needs. “Access is tremendously important,” says Mial, whose experience began in Virginia, then took her around the world before she returned to her North Carolina home. Her story – a vet returning home to North Carolina – illustrates the overall trend, and the VA’s response to that growth. “The VA has done a fantastic job.”
More than half of the VA population has diabetes, and it’s often compounded by other illnesses like high blood pressure, and congestive heart failure. VA providers focus on these conditions. “Nurses in the VA are working with prevention, and helping them become involved in their own care,” Cyrus says. That can mean providing them with monitoring equipment to watch their symptoms.
In a larger sense, the value of VA centers goes beyond the care veterans receive. VA research contributes in revolutionary ways to civilian medicine. Procedures like open-heart surgery, and kidney transplants; diagnostics like the CAT scan; and devices including the pacemaker and insulin pump, and prosthetic limbs arose from VA research. The Durham VA was key to developing the shingles vaccine, and nicotine patch, and the discovery that daily aspirin treatments could reduce death rates.
For older veterans, including those from WWII, the VA offers tailored services. There is Home Based Primary Care, and the Caring for Older Adults and Caregivers at Home program, or COACH, for veterans with dementia. “We’ve done a good job at finding those needs,” she says. “That’s one of the aspects that makes the VA unique.”