MACON, Ga. — On Tuesday, 13WMAZ talked to the Carl Vinson VA Medical Director David Whitmer about their plan to reopen and how COVID-19 has impacted their facilities. In April, we reported a number of steps the VA was taking to keep veterans safe.
Wanya Reese: Thank you so much for joining us, Director Whitmer. My first question for you is, how has COVID-19 impacted the way you all are caring for veterans?
David Whitmer: Well, one is we are enhancing the telehealthcare we have already excelled in. We are doing much more of that, so many primary care visits that may have been face-to-face, we are now able to do it by telephone or VA video connect, the same way with our mental health patients, so for those veterans that are in crisis, they can still get to their mental health provider and make sure that they are connecting again either through a telephone visit or through VA video connect, which is through your phone, and we have been able to care for a veteran through that way.
WR: I read that the VA has announced a plan to reopen in phases, if you don't mind explaining that process to our viewers.
DW: First of all, as a high-reliability organization, the safety of our veterans and staff really is our highest priority. When we consider our health care services and how we will reopen, that is going to be informed by data from the CDC and the state of Georgia that will tell us when we are on a trajectory of 14 consecutive days of downward trends of any new COVID case. Again, this follows the White House guidelines of reopening America -- we want to make sure we are following those. We acknowledge that our plan might be more conservative than other health care facilities, but again, we want to rely on the information and data we get before we reopen. In phase one, we will have our primary care visits, and again, we will limit our primary care and mental health care visits so that we don't have so many people in waiting rooms, and we will have social distancing, we will have universal masking in the facility. Phase one will allow us to reopen some of those primary care, mental health, and other foundational services. Phase two will allow us to resume any service that has been postponed, and phase three will allow visitors to come back in the hospital, in our community living centers, spinal cord injury units, and that is when I think we will be well past this and COVID-19 will be over.
WR: My last question: As we continue to go through the COVID-19 pandemic, what do you want our veterans to know?
DW: They can call our toll free number (1-800-595-5229), this is our clinical contact center, they can speak to one of our providers in addition to have nursing teams and doctors that are there. We also have mental health providers and we can direct them to come here to get that care or somewhere in the local community, but the VA is here to make sure they get that care.
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Whitmer says they are still working on when they are going to start phase one of reopening and allowing veterans back in their center.
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