At One Veterans Clinic In Tennessee, An Extra Doctor Solved A Wait Time Crisis

In the two years since the veterans affairs wait time scandal, the health care system in Middle Tennessee hasn’t improved on the whole, at least according to the wait time metrics set out by the national VA administration.

But some individual VA clinics in the region have managed to cut the wait time to see a doctor considerably. In one case, all it took was a single hire.

At the VA health care clinic in Tullahoma, located on the Arnold Air Force Base, the problem started when one of its doctors left unexpectedly in 2014. Patients went from waiting two days for a primary care appointment in December 2014, to waiting two months in July 2015.

“That’s one of the struggles when you have a very small site with a very small staff,” said 
Ronnie Smith, the associate director of the Tennessee Valley VA health care system. 
“Any loss of staff has a tremendous impact.”

The VA hurried to hire someone else — but that proved difficult. Robert Lim, who oversees outpatient clinics in the region,
told WPLN last May that they had hired one candidate who later decided not to take the job. 

“All of a sudden, we get a note from him yesterday saying he has decided not to come, so we’re back to square one,” Lim said at the time. T
here were no other applicants.

VA officials say it’s hard to compete with pay in the private sector. Indeed, the median salary for a primary care doctor in the private sector is more than $250,000,
according to the Medical Group Management Association. A primary care staff doctor at the VA
makes at most $215,000.

But when the Tennessee Valley VA finally found a replacement in Tullahoma last October — a nurse practitioner who was already working at the Arnold Air Force Base — sure enough, wait times at the clinic dropped almost immediately. Last month, the wait times were the lowest in the region. They were so low, in fact, that no patients had to wait more than 30 days for an appointment.

But other clinics in the area have different pressure points that can make or break its productivity. The clinic in Clarksville, for example, has such little physical space that it had to stop taking new patients to avoid skyrocketing wait times.

Meanwhile, that triggered an influx of veterans going to nearby Dover and Hopkinsville, where wait times are now the highest in the region. VA officials say both clinics are considering hiring a new doctor or nurse practitioner to ease the burden until a new building in Clarksville is finished in 2017.