VAPAHCS Recognized as Top Performer in Women Veterans’ Health Care
Patty Hayes, MD, Chief Consultant, Women Veterans Strategic Health Care Group, traveled from VA headquarters today to present VA’s first, and right now only, Clinical Excellence in Women’s Health Award to the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.
“When the Secretary asks for an example of an outstanding women’s health program, I tell him VA Palo Alto,” said Dr. Hayes. “When Congress asks where they can see the best women’s health program in action, I tell them to go to VA Palo Alto.”
In 2008, the VAPAHCS treated more than 6,000 women, who represented approximately 10 percent of the overall veterans treated. Like all VA hospitals, every woman who came to VA for care was carefully screened for post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and military sexual trauma. Many of the hospital’s programs treat women veterans from all over northern California and the residential post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) program has treated women from every state in the Union.
Director of the Women’s Health Clinic Samina Iqbal, MD, who has worked at VA for more than 14 years said, “While all veterans require convenient access to medical care, we recognize that women have some special needs that must be addressed. Our success is because of the joint efforts of the women's health center and women's mental health center teams providing an interdisciplinary health care approach for women that is unparalleled in the civilian sector.”
Some of the health care system’s more innovative programs for women veterans include:
- The Women’s Health Center is a comprehensive clinical center providing primary care, preventive health, behavioral medicine and counseling, and gynecological specialty services in and environment devoted to women.
- The Women’s Trauma Recovery Program was the first residential program of its kind in the nation and still the only program on the West Coast. Women veterans are treated for both combat and sexual trauma-related PTSD in a safe and healing environment.
- Recently established, the Women’s Prevention, Outreach and Education Center is an interdisciplinary center for women veterans offering health promotion, primary care psychology, comprehensive assessment and specialized outpatient mental health treatment for combat and sexual trauma-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety and substance use. Services also target the adjustment issues of women and their families recently returned from service.
- VAPAHCS has a vibrant women’s health research program that, like the clinical programs, emphasizes the combined mental and medical health needs of women veterans.
“Collaboration and interdisciplinary care cannot be overemphasized,” said Natara Garovoy, MD, program director of the Women’s Prevention, Outreach and Education Center. “It is this approach to program development at the strategic planning level that has produced tightly integrated clinical programs at the service level, educational efforts and nationally recognized research. This perspective, that care should cohesively address medical and mental health needs, is the unifying thread running through all of our work.”
The VAPAHCS has come a long way in developing and expanding its programs for women veterans in the past four decades, with the most crucial part of its journey to success taking place since 1995. Simply stated, the goal was focused on tearing down barriers and building strong relationships within VA, with the Department of Defense, and with the community, in an effort to provide the absolute best care possible to women who have served in the military.
Dr. Hayes finished by saying, “In every area, the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s efforts in caring for women veterans is appreciated and recognized at the highest levels. You are the model for the country.”