Veteran Administration's "Tittie-Gate 2.0"

If you took the time out of your life to read my blog from last week regarding my horrid experience with the Veteran's Health System in regard to my attempt to schedule a follow-up mammogram, first of all, THANK YOU for boning up on the awful treatment endured by Veterans at the hands of the VA.  If you need to catch up, here is the link to the other story.  

I STOLE THIS PHOTO FROM THE VA. Ironic.

The saga continues.  As I was finishing up a major weeding project on this horridly humid, 90 degree Iowa day, Mercy Medical Center called me to confirm the appointment I have tomorrow in their mammography department.  "Wait.  What?" I asked.  "The VA said they were cancelling that appointment directly after I made the appointment because they said I wasn't entitled to the appointment." I explained to the Mercy scheduler.  She was as perplexed as me, namely because it's so complex and discombobulated that it kind of sounds like I'm a raving lunatic when I try to summarize the events of last week.  Well, apparently the VA did NOT cancel the appointment, though they said that was their plan.  After explaining to the scheduler that I cannot afford the procedure out of pocket, she cancelled the Mercy appointment for me.  That's when I called the Des Moines Veteran's Hospital (515-699-5999) and asked for the Women's Clinic.

The man who answered the phone at the VA switchboard could not connect me to the Women's Clinic as they are apparently not available to chit chat during the day.  So when he offered to "relay a message" for me, I accepted the offer, but failed miserably at summarizing the story regarding the run-around received, courtesy the VA.  He said that I would be better served to speak with someone in the "Non-VA Care" department and transferred me.  After going through the entire story again, to a man who had great difficulty understanding the English language, let alone the long, detailed saga, he transferred me again - this time - to the SAME LADY WITH WHOM I SPOKE LAST WEEK!  Oh, thank the stars, Stephanie with the Non-VA Care department at the Des Moies Veteran's Hospital was just as impersonal and abrasive as she was when I spoke with her last week!  

I went through the entire story (for the fourth time today) before I realized that this was the very woman who called me last week to "cancel" the appointment that apparently didn't get cancelled.  After she started taking her very distinct aggressive tone, I realized that this woman knew exactly about what I spoke because she was the one who made my head pop off in frustration last week.  True to form, Stephanie pontificated about how Congress instructed their department to cancel all out-of-VA appointments and she had no stake in any of the blame for any of the unfortunate experience I had endured.  I prodded her four times for the "new procedure" for making these "out-of-VA" appointments.  Eventually she slowly, condescendingly, provided the phone number for a program entitled, "Veteran's Choice" (1-866-606-8198).  In an attempt to truly understand what it is I am "missing" in this whole process, I poked the bear just a little more and asked, "So this is like a HMO?" to which Stephanie snapped, "Now You're Kind Of GETTING IT!".  She then hung up.  

I called "Veteran's Choice", which was apparently a fail safe method put in place by Congress when the VA Health Care system dropped the ball and started killing off scads of Veterans through mismanagement and gross negligence.  It appears as though this procedure was put into place to serve Veterans who had yet to receive an appointment at the VA for 30 days or more.  I learned all of this as soon as I dialed the number because there is an annoyingly long voice message from Secretary Bob McDonald that precedes the super-sensitive touch tone system that routes your call to a customer service agent.  WHAMMO - it dawned on me that I must be one of THOSE Veterans who has fallen though the cracks because the follow-up mammogram was supposed to happen in May - now it's June. BINGO!  This is the way to correct the situation!  CANCEL the appointment that I did finally score out of the network and force me into another bureaucratic shit hole.  That makes perfect sense.  But now I also understood why Stephanie was such an inconsiderate twat-waffle and told me to call my Congressmember if I didn't like the new system.  Her job is effectively obsolete since she is apparently incapable of scheduling Veterans to outside services within the 30 day window.  

I had to dial the Veteran's Choice program number twice because I had NPR on in the background and the super-sensitive system picked up the voice, got confused and transferred me to a number that was out of service.  Seriously.  

I called back and was able to speak with a pencil pusher who works for this new 3rd party scheduler.  For the fifth time, I explained my predicament.  She empathized and I was grateful.  Then she started entering all my personal data into a computer to "start the process of getting a referral".  It will take five days to acquire authorization to get the six month follow-up mammogram.  Then, someone from Veteran's Choice will call me back and make an appointment with a doctor who has agreed to cow-tow to whatever regulations this new program entails.  In short, I may or may not be able to go to Mercy Medical Center after all, even though they were the ones who found the mass in the first place.  I imagine whomever gets my case will be dictated by whichever provider will accept the least amount of money to squish my left boob.    

At this point, we'll be at June 29th or 30th before Veteran's Choice will call me to schedule an appointment at an unknown provider.  Assuming the provider gets me in relatively quickly, that puts us somewhere around July 6th for the 6 month follow up that should have happened in May.  I can honestly say, I'm still missing that "warm, fuzzy feeling" when it comes to my experience with the VA.  In fact, I doubt this saga is even finished.  Will there be a Tittie Gate 3.0?  Yes.  I have no doubt.