Help for northern Maine vets on the way

By U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud
(D-Maine)
    The pace in Washington can be agonizingly slow. That’s especially true when there is a great need for something, a bill has been passed into law to provide it, but an agency takes too long to implement it. That is exactly what rural Maine veterans have been experiencing when it comes to getting health care services closer to home.
    But I’m pleased to report that help is finally on the way. On July 6th, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that it had entered into a contract with Cary Medical Center in Caribou to provide health care services to veterans. The pilot program, which has been dubbed “Project ARCH” (Access Received Closer to Home), began as a bill that I worked to pass into law on October 10th, 2008. Yes, that’s 2008. It took over two and a half years for the VA to translate the legislation into reality for rural veterans in just five pilot locations throughout the county.
    Working with my colleagues on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee over the years, I’ve pushed the VA to do more for veterans in rural areas. We’ve made some strides, such as opening new clinics and health care access points, but more clearly needed to be done. That’s why we moved forward with this pilot program to allow rural veterans to elect to receive covered health services through a non-VA health care provider – a new and major step forward in our efforts to increase access to those veterans that live far from VA facilities.
    On numerous occasions over the past couple of years, I met with the VA to pressure them to speed up the implementation of the program. VA finally announced that they’d move forward with Project ARCH in September of last year. The granting of a contract to a local provider was the final major step toward full implementation, and I’m glad that it has now been taken. For too many years our veterans have struggled with the unacceptably long drives to Togus or Boston.
    According to the VA, the VA Maine Healthcare System in Togus will oversee Cary Medical Center’s activities through a rigorous monitoring program that tracks measures of clinical and administrative performance. This is important because in order to expand this program to other areas of our state and country we must make sure that it’s working as intended and our veterans are getting the services they need. While VA expects that Cary Medical Center will require up to 60 days to complete its preparations in order to provide health care services to eligible veterans, I hope that they can be up and running even sooner.
    I encourage Maine veterans to contact Ryan Lilly at Ryan.Lilly@va.gov or 207-623-5710 to get additional information about Project ARCH or for information on program eligibility. I’d also like to hear directly from Maine veterans that eventually use these new services. Mainers can e-mail me through my website at http://michaud.house.gov.
    At the end of the day, it’s my hope that we can expand this pilot program so that it can help more rural veterans. I think the case for expanding it will be strong once the VA sees how important getting care locally is for veterans in Maine and the other program locations.