Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez hand-delivered a petition to U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough on Tuesday urging the VA to reopen a clinic in Lewis County.
Perez, D-Skamania, handed the petition to McDonough, along with a letter outlining issues facing Southwest Washington veterans, during a tour of the VA Portland Health Care System’s Vancouver campus.
The petition included 16,650 signatures from veterans, caregivers and Lewis County residents in support of the Chehalis clinic.
Perez sent the same petition and letter to McDonough in February but did not receive a response.
Hand-delivering the document helped humanize the numbers, Perez said.
“It’s important to me to make sure that the secretary understands the urgency of upholding our promise to our veterans and that they get the service that they deserve,” she said.
During the visit, Perez and McDonough toured the Veterans Affairs Farming and Recovery Mental Health Services facility on the southwest corner of the campus, 1601 E. Fourth Plain Blvd. The program hosts daily gardening sessions, agricultural vocational training and weekly courses from licensed providers for veterans recovering from substance abuse disorders.
They also met with VA Portland Health Care leadership and staff.
During the meeting, Perez discussed the need for high-quality care to be more accessible for rural veterans. She stressed the urgency of not only reopening a VA clinic in Lewis County, but also ensuring veterans are aware of options for care and have transportation to appointments.
Perez also spoke with McDonough about delays for veterans transferring primary care from the Portland VA Medical Center to the Vancouver campus.
Care desert
There are more than 62,000 veterans in Southwest Washington. Roughly 1 in 4 veterans in Washington live in rural areas, and some 2.7 million veterans in rural areas across the country rely on the VA health care system.
When VA Puget Sound closed the Chehalis clinic to cut costs, it left a void stretching from Vancouver to Olympia for 3,400 of those veterans, Perez said.
Lewis County veterans have said, in some instances, they wait for hours on hold for appointments that are scheduled months out and require a full day of travel.
Perez said she has spoken with patients and providers at the VA Puget Sound’s Mobile Medical Unit that visits Chehalis one day a week. The unit only has capacity to serve eight veterans each visit.
In her letter to McDonough, Perez requested additional county-level data to address these issues.
“By closing the Lewis County Community-Based Outpatient Clinic and replacing it with an inadequate Mobile Medical Unit, the VA Puget Sound Health Care System has put lifesaving care out of reach of many veterans,” she said in the letter. “For these reasons, I urge you to reopen the facility in Lewis County.”
