Legion offers help in recruiting VA doctors

POST FALLS — National American Legion representative met with about 80 veterans in Post Falls Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Spokane.

Louis Celli, Jr., who is the National Director of the American Legion Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Program, led the meeting at the Steven H. Nipp American Legion Post 143.

Earlier in the day he was joined by Legion commanders from Montana, Idaho and Washington to meet with the director of the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane.

That VA hospital recently announced that it will be temporarily replacing its emergency room services with more of an urgent care system until the hospital can recruit new doctors to staff the emergency room.

Celli said the Legion offered to help the director restore that service by helping her find enough doctors outside of the way she was doing it.

“We came here to help her find a solutions to some of these problems,” he said. “We asked her ‘if we could get you enough doctors, would you keep the emergency room opened?’

“She kind of vapor locked,” Celli said, adding that she seemed to be stuck in the mindset that “this is the way we have always done things.”

Celli said while the director did react like a “deer in the headlights,” the Legion delegation agreed that she deserved a chance to try and turn things around.

“We went in there asking is she so corrupt that she needs to be replaced. The answer to that was no, we didn’t see that,” he told the veterans. “We think she needs our help to be a better manager.”

Some of the veterans in the audience did not agree with that assessment, and wondered how the national American Legion is going to hold her accountable to make the changes.

“We are not just going to sit back and hope that she is going to take this information and make this work,” Celli said. “We will also apply some pressure from the top down.”

Other veterans wondered why the administrator didn’t bother to show up to the Post Falls meeting, calling her inaccessible and unapproachable.

“She wanted to be here, but I said ‘Oh, hell no. If she did, I wouldn’t have got anything done today,” Celli said. “I know you guys wanted her to be here so you could crucify her, but that is not what needs to happen.”

Celli said the delegation did discuss inaccessibility with the director and asked her if she could have one thing to help her become a stronger leader, what would that be?

“She said information,” Celli said. “She doesn’t get the information she needs from the secretary’s office in a timely manner.

“I told her that we have the same complaint: ‘We feel you are inaccessible,” he added.

Celli, who will fly back to Washington D.C. today, plans to work with VA headquarters to provide the director with the support she needs to be successful.

He told the veterans that he will follow up with her office on Friday to see if she is making progress.

“It’s up to us to try and work with her because if we don’t we are not leaders,” Celli said. “If we find that this is not workable, then we can still call for her head.”

Dr. Kimberly Morris, chief of medicine at the Spokane VA, and Christine Haas, eligibility specialist for the VA, fielded many comments from the veterans prior to Celli’s briefing and committed to try and get many of their issues resolved.

Idaho’s 1st District Commander Steve Hanson said he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he worries what he will have available to him if he has an episode while the emergency room is closed.

He pointed to a recent incident where he came very close to taking his own life.

“I got to the point where I was cutting myself,” he said, explaining how he went to the VA in Spokane, and the staff there wanted to send him home with some pills. “If they had done that, I probably wouldn’t have been here today,” he said, adding that he was eventually sent to a mental health facility in Spokane instead.

But now that the VA emergency room is closed, he wonders what he will have available to him if he has an episode at 2 a.m. in the morning.

He was told the VA can see where that could be a problem, but added that he can access emergency room care and as long as he notifies the VA within 72 hours the cost of treatment would most likely be paid for by the VA.

Many other vets said that VA’s payment system is far too slow, the system takes too long to get a referral for health care outside of the VA system and the home-based primary care program needs work too.

Both Haas and Morris met with a number of vets after the meeting to get specifics on the issues that they promised to look into.