Veterans from throughout Leflore County and beyond got a chance Saturday to ask questions — and air their complaints — about the Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and healthcare.
At a town hall meeting inside the National Guard Armory in Greenwood that lasted six hours, some of the state’s top VA officials listened as about 75 local veterans voiced their concerns.
Unreturned phone calls, full voicemails and frustrating backlogs in claims processing were among the top complaints of local veterans, who directed their concerns in the town hall meeting to Darryl Brady, the regional director for the Veterans Benefits Administration, and Joseph Vaughn, the assistant director of the VA’s Jackson medical center.
Other veterans griped about rejected claims, difficultly filing paperwork and the slow pace of the VA’s appeals process.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., was also in the crowd, asking his own questions of VA officials and listening to some of the concerns, complaints or issues raised by veterans at the meeting.
About 40 other VA officials — including nurses and enrollment specialists — were also on hand, answering individual questions, helping veterans fill out paperwork and taking down information in order to address complaints.
Mac Henry, a Greenwood reverend who served in the Marines in the 1970s, said he’s struggled for years to get a hold of the right person in the different offices at the VA. Henry said calls often go unanswered and VA employees’ voicemails are all too often full. “Every time you call, that’s all you get,” Henry said.
In response to repeated complaints about difficulty filing claims and following up with VA staff, Brady said that he’s committed to quality customer service and that the entire VA was working hard to improve its operation.
Robert Beasley, American Legion Post 200’s public relations officer and an Army veteran, said he was hopeful that the town hall meeting gave Thompson and VA leaders a chance to get a better sense of the issues that veterans have been facing for years while trying to file for benefits or seek healthcare.
“It is my hope that town meetings like this will improve services for veterans as well as compensation,” Beasley said. “We wanted people to come out and express how they truly felt so that they could see their pain.”
Andrew Carnegie, the Holmes County veterans service officer, struck a similar note. He said he’d seen other veterans struggling with confusing paperwork or an unresponsive bureaucracy for years. He said he hoped the forum had given Thompson, Vaughn and Brady a chance to “see and hear” the real issues, big and small, in the organization.
Vaughn said the VA Medical Center in Jackson has been working hard to reach out to veterans. So far, nurses from the facility have visited about 25 counties statewide this year and are aiming to visit the rest soon.
“If people call us, we’re there,” Vaughn said.
He added that the VA Medical Center and the Benefits Administration have received extra funds to help clear out a backlog in claims, enrollment requests and other paperwork.
Vaughn also pointed out that some of the scandals that have rocked the VA in the last year — including revelations that some VA medical facilities maintained secret waiting lists for doctors appointments — didn’t affect the VA’s facilities in Mississippi.
Stephanie Holt, a nurse practioneer with the VA in Jackson, was at the armory enrolling veterans for VA healthcare benefits.
Holt said that traveling to the state’s different counties has been a highly effective way of reaching out to many veterans who qualify but have not yet enrolled for care.
“It gives a lot of them a chance to be put in the system, because they won’t come to Jackson,” Holt said. “We can do everything to get them set up except get them their ID cards.”
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
