A Veterans Affairs medical center in Georgia and two clinics in other states are undergoing changes or closures as a result of the department’s review of veterans’ medical services.
VA Secretary Doug Collins said Thursday during a Senate hearing on the VA’s $488 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2027 that the VA has decided to close facilities that don’t properly care for veterans and has made changes to address longstanding issues at Augusta VA Medical Center in Georgia.
According to Collins, community-based VA outpatient clinics in McMinnville, Tennessee, and Schenectady, New York, will close this year. McMinnville will close May 31, and the Schenectady clinic will close in August, according to reports.
The closures have alarmed veterans who use the clinics and will be forced to go elsewhere for care; in some cases, they will travel more than 35 miles from the existing clinics for health services.
In the hearing before the Senate Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, Collins said the clinics, which were privately run, did not meet VA standards of care and will be shuttered.
According to Collins, the contractors managing the facilities were not meeting requirements and veterans were failing to get quality care.
“For years, our veterans were going and being handed off, handed off, handed off, new doctors coming in all the time … a lot of time they were not showing up, we were having to then schedule them in other places,” Collins said. “This is a problem.”
Tennessee and New York lawmakers have raised concerns about the impact of the closures on the 4,000 veteran patients in their districts and states.
In March, Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., wrote Collins about the McMinnville closure, saying in his district, with 46,000 veterans, patients will have to drive more than an hour to receive medical care.
“I applaud the work your administration has done to improve patient outcomes. However, I am extremely disappointed and concerned about how the VA has handled the closing of this rural healthcare clinic,” DesJarlais wrote.
During Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., urged Collins to consider establishing a VA-operated clinic in Schenectady or, at the very least, ensure that veteran patients at the existing facility don’t fall through cracks.
“In rural America, drive times are highly relevant. With gas prices as high as they are, this could mean much more expense for them, much more stress for them,” Gillibrand said. “Please, if you are willing to do a different type of facility at the VA site, that would be the best of both worlds.”
At the same time, the VA is working to improve the troubled VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, replacing its management team in the last month, the second leadership change in 14 months.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., ranking member of the Senate Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, pressed Collins for answers on the Augusta VA, which was the subject of a VA Office of Inspector General investigation.
The VA OIG found last year that the facility had a hostile work environment, including retaliation against staff, and supply shortages that hampered veteran care.
“I sent a letter earlier this year requesting some specific information about the management of that facility, and have not yet received the detailed responses to that letter,” Ossoff said.
Collins assured Ossoff that the VA had completed the recommendations made by the OIG in its report and was working to resolve the management issues.
“Nobody’s more upset about Augusta than me. It’s my hometown, it’s my home area,” Collins said.
In response to Ossoff’s questions as to how the VA announced the closures of clinics, Collins said the Veterans Health Administration believes it has followed the law in cancelling contracts. He also noted that the VA has opened 34 clinics in the past year.
The VA has requested $488 billion for fiscal 2027, including $123 billion for medical care and services, nearly $4 billion to construct new facilities and $4.2 billion to continue rolling out the department’s new electronic health records system.
Collins told members of the committee that the restart of the medical records program in Michigan this month after a three-year hiatus has been “phenomenal.”
“A tornado hit one of our facilities — lose power — and we never lost a bit in a very new system. That is how well this is working right now,” Collins said.
Subcommittee Chairman Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said looked forward to receiving an update on the medical records system modernization program, which began eight years ago and is now in use at 10 VA facilities and associated clinics.
“We hope we are on track to make health records boring again,” Boozman quipped.
Patricia Kime is a senior writer covering military and veterans health care, medicine and personnel issues.
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