BUFFALO, N.Y. — A new report finds that veterans trying to get emergency care at Buffalo's VA Hospital are not only likely to wait longer than at non-VA hospitals, but also longer than at most other VA hospitals across the country.
USA Today, using data from the VA compared the median time between when veterans arrived at the emergency room and when they were admitted, if necessary, at VA hospitals across the nation.
It showed that at the Buffalo VA, that median time was 7 hours and 20 minutes, the 7th longest wait time out of 115 V.A. hospitals examined and among the worst ten percent in that category.
However, Dr. Amanda Werthman, Associate Director of the emergency room at the Buffalo VA, stressed that this doesn’t mean that patients are sitting around for that time without getting any attention.
"I think that number misconstrues what's actually being done here in the emergency department,” Dr. Werthman told WGRZ-TV. “The actual number from the time of triage until they are seen by an emergency room physician is ten minutes, so patients are being attended to very quickly with virtually no wait time to being seen by an emergency room doctor.”
Werthman also cited the area’s relatively older veteran population as a factor in the time between arrival and admission, as older patients often have multiple medical problems.
“They do present some complexities, so it does take some time to evaluate their reason to be seen in the ER and to treat and stabilize them before we admit them,” Werthman said.
The data used in the USA Today report also reflects where things stood in June, and since that time Buffalo's VA opened a new ICU, which could also help reduce wait times for emergency care,
A Veterans Administration spokesperson told the paper the agency recognizes the need to improve the speed by which it can admit veterans to the inpatient unit, but noted non-VA hospitals also struggle with long waits.
While that may be true, however, the data showed that at 70% of VA hospitals, the median time between arrival in the emergency room and admission was longer than at other hospitals, in some cases by hours.
In Buffalo's case, almost 4 hours longer.
But, in non-emergency room environments, the VA is faring better according to a more recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It shows the VA significantly reduced wait times for veteran patients in primary care and three specialty care services between 2014 and 2017. And that for all specialties except orthopedics, VA wait times were shorter in 2017 than non-VA facilities.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has proposed new rules to widen veterans' access to outside health care, affording them more of an opportunity to be treated at non-VA hospitals, which would still be paid for by the VA.