Amid this summer’s push by the Veterans Administration in Alaska to hold town hall meetings across the state, the state’s VA Healthcare Director, Dr. Timothy Ballard, was a guest on Alaska Public Media’s Talk of Alaska on Tuesday.
During an hour of questions from host Lori Townsend and state-wide callers, Ballard offered an update on the organization’s progress and remaining challenges in connecting veterans to benefits. That included addressing worries over privatization, an issue Ballard said affects Alaska uniquely relative to the rest of the country.
“Privatization for us really doesn’t look any different,” Ballard said. “It’s still referring a lot of specialty care to the providers in the state that have it. For those things we can’t get in the state, we look for partnering with other opportunities — whether it’s in the Lower 48 or not.
“Regardless of what happens in the VA throughout the entire country, I think our system is going to look pretty much the same as it has for the past decade,” Ballard continued, “Because of the fact that we just provide the basics of out-patient services and refer out a lot of the rest.”
The VA is the biggest healthcare provider in the country, and has about 36,000 members enrolled in Alaska out of the state’s roughly 77,000 veterans, according to figures cited by Ballard.
Since a series of reforms were hastily implemented under the Choice Act in 2014, Alaska has struggled to quickly connect veterans with healthcare providers outside the VA system. For example, staff in Alaska are now charged with handling about 1,000 medical referrals a week, according to Ballard. Though the organization is working on was to cut down the time it takes processing those referrals from a few weeks to a single day, the fundamental challenge is the larger issue of chronic under-staffing.
“We are trying to hire more staff,” Ballard explained. “We have a fixed budget, and so I’m trying to create money somewhere else in our system to buy more staff.”
The Alaska VA’s budget is designed to fund 550 staff positions, but according to Ballard, the real need is for between 650 and 700.
There have been measurable gains in hiring more medical professionals since Ballard’s tenure started a little over a year ago, including getting a physician at the Mat-Su clinic for the first time in five years.
“But it is very slow going, and we’re trying to make an effort in regards to more access,” Ballard added.
The VA system in Alaska is still struggling to find solutions to many of the same problems the state faces with healthcare overall, such as insufficient access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, as well as the costs of care.
Officials are holding a listening session Tuesday night in Wasilla, and two more in Juneau and Kenai during August. There is also a healthcare and benefits clinic planned for this Saturday at the VA’s Muldoon facility in Anchorage alongside a motorcycle rally.
Zachariah Hughes reports on city & state politics, arts & culture, drugs, and military affairs in Anchorage and South Central Alaska.
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