6 regions where vets wait longest for VA care

In this March 11, 2015 photo, storm clouds roll over the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C. North Carolina is home to the Army's Fort Bragg, the Marines' Camp Lejeune, and nine of the 50 VA medical facilities with the most patients waiting more than 30 days for care. Fayetteville VAMC director Elizabeth Goolsby attributed problems to a variety of factors, but said the region has experienced an 8 percent increase in patient utilization per year. "We've been at war for 13 years," she said. Floods of young veterans who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq are leaving the service and enrolling in the VA care system for the first time, she said. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) In this March 11, 2015 photo, storm clouds roll over the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C. North Carolina is home to the Army's Fort Bragg, the Marines' Camp Lejeune, and nine of the 50 VA medical facilities with the most patients waiting more than 30 days for care. Fayetteville VAMC director Elizabeth Goolsby attributed problems to a variety of factors, but said the region has experienced an 8 percent increase in patient utilization per year. "We've been at war for 13 years," she said. Floods of young veterans who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq are leaving the service and enrolling in the VA care system for the first time, she said. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

By Associated Press April 9, 2015 3 min read

The Veterans Affairs system operates more than 1,000 facilities. A look at some regions where waits were longest over a six-month period beginning on Sept. 1 and ending Feb. 28:

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Northern Florida:

It’s a long drive from the tip of Florida’s panhandle to Jacksonville, on the Atlantic coast, but with some detours you can hit four of the most delay-prone VA outpatient clinics in the country. The VA clinics in Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Panama City and Pensacola collectively completed 250,000 appointments during the six-month period. Nearly 13 percent of those visits involved a wait of longer than 30 days, well above the national average of 2.8 percent. In Jacksonville, 7,117 appointments involved a wait of more than 60 days – more than in the entire states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut combined.

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