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Posted : 12/12/2001 12:00 AM SEGUIN — A popular veterans clinic at Guadalupe Valley Hospital will close at the end of this month unless a solution is found to an impasse between the hospital and the Veterans Administration. The clinic serves about 400 veterans, twice as many as was expected when it was started a year ago, said Martin Boyle, an attorney for the Veterans Administration. The biggest problem, according to Guadalupe Valley Hospital Administrator Don Richey, is that no local doctors are willing to review patient charts as the VA requires. Patients at the clinic are seen by a nurse practitioner, who reviews their health status and gets low-cost prescriptions if needed. The charts from every patient's initial visit, plus a random 10 percent of charts from follow-up visits, must be reviewed by a doctor to meet the VA's standard of care, Boyle said. He said private insurers have the same requirement. But the four local internists qualified to do that work are too busy and do not want to open themselves up to the potential liability of a malpractice lawsuit from a patient they've never even seen, Richey said. About three dozen veterans attended Tuesday's Guadalupe County Commissioners Court meeting to urge the county to find a solution to the impasse. "It would be a dismal failure for us to see this clinic close," said area veteran Don Larson. "There are many vets who can't afford to drive to San Antonio or can't afford the high cost of prescription drugs. All I am hearing right now are excuses about why this clinic has to fail. I'm not hearing anything positive about how to make it work." Veteran Albert Kolbe told the commissioners, "Something is wrong with our form of government if our veterans are relinquishing their privilege to health care. I think it is your obligation to look into this program and do what you can to help us." Guadalupe County Commissioner Jim Wolverton said, "I don't see why Guadalupe Valley Hospital and CA Associates (which holds the VA contract to run the clinic out of the hospital) can't sit down and iron this out and get the veterans the service they deserve." 12/12/2001 |
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