Report: Veterans Struggle to Secure Appointments With Community Providers

The Veterans Community Care Program, a Trump-era initiative designed to help veterans get access to healthcare quickly and efficiently, has been anything but, according to a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office.

The program was officially launched in 2019 under the MISSION Act, which ended the Veterans Choice Program and replaced with the newly established Veterans Community Care Program, which gives veterans access to more healthcare options outside of the Veterans Affairs system.

Since its rollout, however, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said the program has been far from what Congress intended, with veterans being told they must wait weeks before they can be seen by a provider, due to the VA struggling to handle the demand.

"Veterans in the U.S. have earned these benefits," said Rounds. "We have to fix it."

Rounds said he wasn’t surprised that a recent Government Accountability Office report confirmed what some of his veteran constituents had been complaining about for years — long wait times and the inability to secure medical appointments with a non-VA provider, even if they qualify to see a doctor outside of the VA.