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Today, Rep. Miller-Meeks, (R-Iowa), the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the Subcommittee’s oversight hearing to assess veteran needs and improve outcomes in coordination of care:

Good afternoon. This oversight hearing of the Subcommittee on Health will now come to order.

As a 24-year veteran and a physician who has worked within the VA, I have seen firsthand how important coordination is to providing timely, quality care, especially for veterans with complex health needs. It is one of my top priorities in Congress to ensure veterans have access to care where they need it and when they need it. 

VA’s care coordination programs should help veterans navigate the complex world of healthcare both within the VA and with VA’s community partners. VA’s Patient Aligned Care Team (or PACT) model provides personalized, patient-driven care and positively impacts a veterans’ experience in the primary care setting.

However, high-need, high-risk veterans often lack support for their complex clinical and psychosocial needs beyond that setting. This is not due to a lack of compassionate coordinators and social workers within VA, but rather due to poorly defined roles and jurisdictions for these advocates.

Veterans who receive care across multiple locations are at the greatest risk for lapses in care especially when their medical records are either not returned to VA or VA does not correctly input vital medical information. Communication between the VA and its provider partners could be greatly enhanced with coordinators who are empowered to work across clinical and arbitrary bureaucratic lines.

As we will hear from VAOIG, and from our second panel of veteran advocates, veterans with complex cases who do not receive proper care coordination, more often than not, experience detrimental health outcomes. Some of their stories are heartbreaking.

The Quality of Life Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, and Paralyzed Veterans of America have managed to establish programs that cross multiple disciplines to effectively manage the care for some of our most complex injured and ill veterans. VA can and must do better. 

I look forward to hearing how we can better coordinate the coordinators and ensure that no veteran falls through the cracks.

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Brownley for her opening statement.