A recent study published online in a journal produced by the American Psychiatric Association found that the VA is up to 30 percent better at providing medication to veteran patients than the private sector is for its patients.
That was largely due to the VA’s ability to provide a one-stop shop for timely medication to patients with appropriate follow-up care, such as therapy and blood-level checks, to ensure proper medication dosages.
Patients in the private sector also have other hurdles like insurance programs that don’t cover certain mental health care costs, such as medication associated with mental health disorders.
The study was approved by Congress and funded by the VA. According to one of the primary authors, it compared data from veterans and patients in the private sector who were being treated for five mental health disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, major depression and substance abuse disorders.
Dr. Alfonso Carreno, chief of mental health and behavioral sciences at the C.W. Bill Young campus, explained that study findings are partly explained by the fact that the private sector is driven by profits, whereas the VA is not.
“In for-profit systems, you have to minimize the costs,” said Carreno, whose own brother suffered from a mental health disorder and committed suicide. “Sometimes under those systems, they may say or suggest to providers, physicians and others, ‘Only medically necessary testing, please, or in life or death, if you really need it,’ even though these tests are recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, or the American Diabetic Association.”
The Bay Pines facility is able to see 100 percent of its first-time mental health patient referrals within 30 days, Carreno said. Various specialized mental health programs treated 21,067 unique patients in fiscal year 2015, he said.
Dr. Katherine Watkins, a primary author of the study at the RAND Corp., said the study compared more than 830,000 veterans against 545,000 nonveterans.
Watkins said that the VA was allowed to review the study before it was published, but that “it was only to check for potential errors in execution. All of the conclusions and interpretations are from the authors of the study,” she said.
And all RAND studies, she said, are scrutinized by “at least two external reviewers.”
She said many veterans who suffer from various psychological conditions are especially vulnerable, making them more prone to homelessness or drug and alcohol addiction.
“It’s generally harder to take care of people who are sicker and more economically disadvantaged,” Watkins said by telephone from Santa Monica, Calif. “So it’s harder to take care of that population. … It either points to how good of a job the VA is doing or how bad of a job the private sector is doing.” (Source: Tampa Bay times | Les Neuhaus | May 30, 2016)