Plans for VA clinic, benefits office moving forward

Officials from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will be on island starting January to assess the best location for the local VA clinic that will open sometime in 2009.

Ruth Coleman, executive officer of the CNMI Military and Veterans Affairs Office, said officials would visit in January to determine locations for the clinic, while another group will visit the island at the end of January or beginning of February to conduct assessments for the Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits office, which will also open in 2009.

“We’re going to have people here that work for the federal government, so that it’ll be much easier for our veterans to go after their benefits and healthcare,” Coleman said.

She said the clinic and office are long overdue.

“Our veterans have earned all this already,” she said. “It’s only right that the Department of Veterans Affairs, both for health and benefits, come to the actual residence of these veterans.”

Right now, Coleman said, only veterans with service-connected disabilities are taken cared of locally on a fee basis, while all other veterans must pay for their ticket to go to the clinic in Guam.

“I just don’t think that’s right. It’s not fair,” Coleman added.

Although the new healthcare clinic will be on Saipan, all CNMI veterans will be cared for, Coleman said, because VA physicians and their staff will travel to Tinian and Rota on a regular basis.

Coleman said the number of registered veterans in the CNMI led the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to determine a clinic and benefits office was necessary.

“Everything is data driven,” Coleman said. “You’ve got to have the numbers. It’s like a business. You don’t come here for just one person. You’ve got to come here for a lot of people. That’s exactly how the Department of Veterans Affairs works.”

There are currently 972 registered veterans in the CNMI, 250 reservists and more than 300 active duty service members, Coleman said, adding that she knows there are more out there and urges any veteran to register with the department.

The CNMI is the last U.S. territory to get a VA clinic and benefits office but Palau, FSM and the Republic of Marshall Islands, which all have U.S. veterans, do not have clinics or benefit offices.

Coleman recently returned from Honolulu where she attended a task force meeting chartered by Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake. The task force discussed the future of healthcare and benefit services to veterans in the Pacific Insular areas and the U.S. Virgin Islands.