Burr Presses Veterans Affairs Secretary on VA Clinic Failures in North Carolina

WASHINGTON – June 17, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) continued to press Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald on the recent failures to provide medical services to Veterans at the Wilmington, North Carolina, VA Health Care Center (HCC) due to water safety problems. On March 19, 2015, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority received a water quality complaint from the Wilmington HCC. The utility tested the water inside the clinic, determined there was an interior plumbing problem, and advised the HCC to stop using the water on March 23. The efforts to correct the water quality problems are now in their third month.

Senator Burr outlines his concerns in a letter sent yesterday, “While VA says that it is referring patients requiring urgent care procedures to community providers at VA expense, I have heard from concerned veterans who tell me VA is not fully honoring its commitment to refer urgent care patients to community providers and that patients are, in some cases, being required to travel beyond forty miles to receive care at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center. I understand that Fayetteville’s forty mile radius and Wilmington’s overlap to some extent, but if this “overlap” is part of the reasoning for having veterans travel further for care which is available locally, it defies common sense and may also defy good medical sense.”

Senator Burr requests a briefing on his concerns in July.

You can read the letter here.