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WASHINGTON – A consulting firm has recommended what to do about the Fort Wayne hospital where 48,000 veterans get their health care, but the Department of Veterans Affairs has not made the report public.
Veterans who use the Lake Avenue hospital are pinning their hopes on the report to reverse an earlier proposal to end in-patient services.
A national commission recommended in 2004 that only outpatient health care be offered in Fort Wayne and that area veterans go to Indianapolis for in-patient services.
After protests from veterans and Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, the VA agreed to hire an independent consultant to take another look, including re-evaluating how many people use the hospital. The initial recommendation was made before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq spiked the number of veterans with injuries and post-war medical conditions.
Possible recommendations include building a new facility on the Lake Avenue campus, sending veterans to Indianapolis, adding a wing to the existing hospital to expand the number of in-patient beds or signing a long-term contract with a local hospital to provide care.
About 160,000 veterans live in the 26 Indiana and three Ohio counties served by the hospital. Roughly 30 percent are in the VA health care system, including 1,700 of the 3,300 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, regional spokesman Timothy Twiss said.
The $530,000 report, more than a year in the making and due in mid-summer, was submitted to the VA by Virginia consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. But until internal reviews are completed, headquarters spokeswoman Lisette Mondello said, it will not be made public or given to members of Congress.
Souder said he is less concerned about the report’s being overdue than he is that the recommendations are the best solution for regional veterans.
Souder said he has not seen the report and doesn’t have any firm inside knowledge of what it will recommend, “but I am confident they’ll recommend more in-patient beds. … I know the facts. Any fair study is going to include that.”
The question is, he said, whether those beds are at the Lake Avenue campus or at one of the area’s other hospitals.
The report was ordered after a national commission projected in 2004 that just 17 of the hospital’s 26 in-patient beds would be needed by 2012, far below the 40-bed minimum it said is needed to operate an in-patient hospital.
The panel said shrinking the Fort Wayne hospital’s services would save $2 million.
sylviasmith@jg.net
