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Waiting cramps service at clinic
By MATTHEW WAITE PORT RICHEY -- As part of his home shopping around the Port Richey area, Edward Szech Jr. called the Veterans Affairs clinic on Little Road to see if he could move his care from the VA Medical Center at Bay Pines near St. Petersburg closer to his new home. When he got off the phone, Szech wondered if he still wanted to live in Port Richey. Szech, 54, a Navy corpsman during the Vietnam War, needs care for post-traumatic stress disorder, from which he is considered disabled. The St. Petersburg resident was told that the waiting list for him to get an appointment with a doctor was more than a year long. That he called "unacceptable." "This year and a half waiting list is not going to fly," Szech said. But it's reality for many area veterans. Open since June 2000, the number of veterans that are asking for care at the Little Road clinic has overwhelmed the capacity of the 40,000-square-foot clinic and its 13 doctors. "(New patients) are being put on a waiting list," said VA spokeswoman Carolyn Clark. "There is just an overwhelming demand for health care." And it isn't just Pasco County, she said. "It's all over the state," she said. Clark said the VA is trying to deal with the need, but it can't sacrifice its current care. "If we can't treat them, we can't schedule an appointment." Fred Harrop, the director of Veterans Services, a Pasco County office that helps veterans navigate the VA maze, said the crowding at the clinic is "a very real problem." "The system is just simply overwhelmed," he said. Clark said the Port Richey clinic had between 13,000 and 14,000 patients. The U.S. Census Bureau, in a survey completed in April, said that in 2000, Pasco County was home to between 22,000 and 28,000 veterans age 65 and older. And Harrop said he thinks the number is more toward the high side of the Census Bureau's estimate. "These are the individuals . . . who are more in need of not only medical care but prescriptions," Harrop said. Unlike in most private insurance plans, veterans can get a 30-day supply of prescriptions for $2, Harrop said, but they have to see a VA doctor to get the prescription. When some spend more than $400 a month on prescriptions, the VA plan is awfully inviting, he said. But in 1997, Congress opened VA clinics to more veterans than strictly service connected veterans, Harrop said, and didn't provide enough money to pay for those additional patients the opening created. And since then, clinics have been overwhelmed, he said. "There's no sense beating up the people at the (Port Richey) clinic," Harrop said. "It's a funding issue. "The bottom line is it comes down to money." Harrop said he tells veterans who come to his office to call their congressional representatives. And, he said, both who represent west Pasco -- U.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis and U.S. Rep. Karen Thurman -- have heard about the problem at the clinic. Both Bilirakis' and Thurman's offices said they were aware of the crunch at the Little Road clinic. Thurman said that the $52-billion VA funding bill signed by President Bush in September includes a 7 percent increase in spending from the year before, plus $94-million more for Florida VA hospitals. She said she hoped that money would help, but it wasn't going to eliminate waiting lists. Other efforts, such as tying VA funding to workloads, has helped in the past, she said. Thurman said she hoped some other measures being debated in Congress would also help -- a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, which would lessen the demand for VA prescription drug benefits, and a new measure that would allow the VA to take Medicare money, putting more money into the VA system. "I wish there was an easy answer for this," Thurman said. "We continue to try and provide the funding. But it's difficult. We're in a difficult budget time." Szech is one who has called Washington. He said he called U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, and his representative, C.W. "Bill" Young of St. Petersburg, to let them know about his experience at the clinic. Szech said he still wants to move to Port Richey, and he was later told that he could come to the clinic on a walk-in basis -- if they have time, they'll see him -- until he could get on regular appointments. "I feel like there should be more money allocated to the clinic," he said. "We need all that money pumped in for the veterans."
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