'That's Horrible': Greg Murphy Left Stunned By Veteran's Story About VA Withholding Care

4 months ago

During a House Veterans' Affairs Community hearing in July, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) was shocked by Dallas Knight's, Founder & President of Operation Juliet, experience with VA medical care.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Ranking Member Brownlee. I now recognize Dr. Murphy for five minutes

00:05for any questions you may have. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank each of you

00:08for your service and the work that you're doing to try to make our care for

00:12our veterans as best as possible, regardless of where it comes from. You

00:16know, I wish this was not an either-or kind of situation. This needs to be an

00:21and, yeah, a yes-and situation, because the VA cannot handle all the health care

00:26that it needs to handle for our veterans, period. There are not the resources, some

00:31of which is negligence on the behalf of the medical education system of the

00:36United States. We simply don't have the doctors. We simply don't have the doctors.

00:39But it just kind of hurts me that people want to say this is better, that is

00:46better, and against one care or the other. So, Dr. Hunter, since you brought it up,

00:52you don't mind, I'm going to ask you about your ocular melanoma. So are you

00:56saying that the VA doctor picked that up because they knew you might be exposed

00:59to something, or are you saying your optometrist out in the community missed

01:01it? I had had an appointment with an optometrist out in the community who did

01:06miss it. Six months later, I had an appointment with an optometrist at the VA

01:10who was able to recognize it. So did the optometrist do an ocular examination? Did

01:14look in your eye and look all around your quadrants? Yes. Did you, by any chance, get

01:18films from them before then? Because they always make films. Ocular melanomas can

01:23happen in six months. Yes, there were films. It was present in the films when my VA

01:28provider had reviewed them later on, and it wasn't discussed or addressed. So I

01:32would, I would just submit that that's a difference between two physicians. It

01:36didn't matter where they're coming from. Whether you could flip them the other

01:39way itself to say one is better just because of the place where they work I

01:42think is, is, is just not being correct. Also, delving into some of your

01:48comments about post-operative care. Can you give me a breakdown of the type of

01:54patients that are referred out to community care for surgery versus those

01:58that are kept in-house? I can take that question for the record and get you the

02:02breakdown. I can, I can tell you what it is. You don't refer things out to the VA

02:05unless it's specialty care. I'm a specialty surgeon. I get specialty referrals for

02:09specialty care that cannot be happened within the hospital. By definition, those are

02:14more costly because they're more time effective. They're more specialty

02:18oriented and their risks rates are higher. So doing actually a risk ratio

02:23would be factual to this rather than just saying post-operative care is better at

02:27the VA. The outcomes are better than they are in the community because they're two

02:31entirely different populations. You refer people out who need specialty care who by

02:36definition have greater needs than they do. I just don't like the tenor that we're

02:40putting, they're battling against, you know, saying that the community care doctors of

02:45which I am one are better, are worse. I don't think that's fair. That's not fair to

02:50our veterans. Then what are you saying to them? Anybody gets referred out while

02:53we're saying we're sending you out for inferior care? That's not fair. I don't

02:58think that is fair. Ms. Knight, let me ask you this, you know, and there are

03:04questions about, which has bothered me since I've been on this committee, about our

03:08electronic medical record, which I think is just derelict in the VA through how

03:12many administrations that we've been going through. I still can't. I had a

03:15patient last week as a VA and I said, did you bring your records? And he said, no,

03:19they said you'd have them. Of course they never sent them and I can't get access to

03:22them. Can you let me, can you explain to me how just the community care has helped

03:26you to access more or less, excuse me, giving you more or less access to VA

03:31covered health care? I have more options. I live in Montana, the biggest city in

03:36Montana at 150,000 people. So it's quite small, actually. And there are not a lot

03:42of providers, let alone specialty providers from within the VA. I see a

03:48chiropractor and an acupuncturist to help with my chronic migraines, of which

03:52neither are available within the VA. And as I've shared in my testimony, I've had

03:57pretty horrid stories and experiences within the VA and good experiences within the

04:04community. My chiropractor, who is a male, actually took the time to review what

04:10information was passed to him from the VA with my referral and asked me on my

04:16preference on whether or not I wanted a man or a woman physician, which was the

04:20first time I've ever been asked as a proactive manner on my preference given

04:27my military sexual trauma. So, so they're good experiences or bad experiences really

04:32probably within both systems. Absolutely. I would ask to just have more control and

04:37choice over where I want to go. As I also mentioned in my testimony, most times the

04:42gatekeeper within the VA calls and says, here's your list of providers, where do

04:47you want to go? And I feel like I'm on this ticking time bomb of making a

04:50decision while, you know, momentarily taking a timeout of my workplace because

04:55it's usually Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. And in that effort, my typical

04:59question is, well, what's closest to me as a convenience for me? Not necessarily, are

05:05they man? Are they woman? Do they have good reviews? Can I do research on them? I

05:09would ask to better understand what my options are so that I can make a more

05:13informed and educated decision for myself. Thank you. You know, Dr. Mobbs, it hurt my

05:17heart to hear that somebody in an administration would withhold care because

05:22they wouldn't, they wouldn't have the compassion, much less the medical competence to

05:27send somebody out to the community and withhold care. I hope that person, I don't

05:32want to say disciplined, I hope they got shown the door because what an absolute

05:36disservice it would be to whoever veterans, sadly enough, if they die in pain

05:40because they didn't get their radiation. That's horrible. That is a horrible story.

05:43Miss Keenan, in your opinion, if you will, where does community care fit in? Am I

05:50already over, I'm sorry, I've been yakking too much. I apologize. I'll yell back.

'That's Horrible': Greg Murphy Left Stunned By Veteran's Story About VA Withholding Care

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