In 2010, retired Capt. James A. Lovell, a NASA astronaut, center, cuts the ribbon to officially open the Capt. James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago as several members of Congress look on. The center was the nation’s first fully integrated VA/DoD entity combining DoD and U.S. Navy medical personnel with VA staff members. U.S. Navy photo by Paul Engstrom
WASHINGTON — The James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago is the only joint DoD/VA healthcare facility in operation—a partnership between VA and the Navy. With a gentle push from Congress, that might change in the not-too-distant future.
Back in 2019, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) introduced the VA-DoD Shared Medical Facilities Act. The bill would provide the secretaries of VA and DoD the authority to enter into agreements for the planning, design, and construction of shared medical facilities.
While the legislation did not progress beyond committee two years ago, Sullivan told department officials at a Senate VA committee hearing examining VA and DoD sharing last month that the bill has new life as part of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“My bill is in this year’s NDAA, so this is going to happen. And we want VA and DoD to be ready when it does,” Sullivan declared.
He noted that, while Lovell is the inspiration for the bill, it is by no means a flawless model.
“Right now, it’s the only example currently in operation. It’s a model, but it’s not perfect,” Sullivan explained. “The next time we do this, we want to learn lessons from that model. [For example] we still have restrictions on DoD physicians not being able to see VA patients, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.”
VA leaders have said they are fully supportive of the bill and are already discussing possibilities with DoD.
“Just last week, we had a meeting to talk about how we can look at this model and move it into other locations, but understanding first what the challenges might be,” Deputy VA Secretary Donald Remy told the committee. “[Your legislation will] help make sure we can acquire and lease facilities that will be necessary to do this work.”
The discussion of joint facilities was the most concrete discussion of departmental sharing in a hearing that quickly became a grab-bag of high-profile issues.
Near the top of the list were the departments’ handling of the COVID-19 vaccine and those servicemembers or employees that refuse it.
“The military sees the vaccine as a readiness issue. That’s something the secretary has talked about,” Gilbert Cisneros, DoD’s under secretary for personnel and readiness, told the legislators. “Servicemembers right now receive 12 different vaccines that they’re required to take. They’re discharged for failure to do so. [And it’s up] to the individual service as to how they proceed with that. … The Air Force discharged 40 recruits recently, but they were left with the option to come back if they decided to receive the vaccine.”
VA Benefits
Committee members were concerned about how those servicemembers discharged for refusing to take the vaccine would be treated when it came to VA benefits, since their discharge would be other than honorable (OTH).
Remy assured the committee that every veteran with an OTH discharge, regardless of the reason for it, is examined by VA adjudicators.
“If someone was discharged as other than honorable, we would look at their circumstances on a case-by-case basis,” he explained. “There may be an impact to their benefits. We would consider all factors before making a determination. [We look at] extenuating circumstances, evidence provided by a third party, performance and accomplishments during service, nature of infraction and character of their service at the time of discharge.”
As for VA employees, Remy said that the department is still gathering responses to a survey of its staff asking about vaccination status.
“If they don’t get vaccinated, we provide counseling and information to them,” Remy said. “We have a lengthy disciplinary process. At the end of that process, it could result in separation from employment. But, at this stage, we’re providing counseling, education, and information to those employees who have reported they haven’t been vaccinated or those who have not responded to the survey.”
Another subject that came up multiple times during the hearing was burn pits and tracking the environmental exposures of servicemembers. Legislators raised the specter of Agent Orange, telling the department leaders that they did not want to see this become another 40-year struggle for recognition and benefits.
“That is not something we want to see our servicemembers go through again,” Cisneros said. “We’re moving on this. We have the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER) in place now to track where the burn pits took place and make sure that servicemembers who might have been exposed to those—that information is being tracked. And we ensure that’s information we can pass onto VA. Once those individuals have been identified, we can ensure they’ll receive the treatment they’ve earned.”
While Cisneros assured the committee that the existence of the ILER was being disseminated among servicemembers, some expressed concern that without asking each servicemember at discharge specifically about possible environmental exposures during their service, that individuals would be missed.