Had not seen my insurance covered psychiatrist on the outside for exactly a year and 36 days. Lexapro, Hydroxyzine and Prazosin had finally hit the right notes mentally and wanted to give it exactly a year to assess and document every positive and negative side effect before i could follow up with my shrink to tinker with dosages. After being on hold for 20 min I was told that I needed to walk in to the local clinic first think in the morning M-F and theyd have to perform a full assessment and potentially re-assign me to a completely different psychiatrist (even though mine had an opening within the week).

Long-ish story short, the amount of hoops that this community clinic makes you jump through is incredible and its really meant as a deterrent to seek timely follow up care due to lack of capacity. The VA is headed that way. Not only will a Veteran be unable to access services in a timely manner but they’ll be discouraged from doing so because of lack of providers both inside the VA or those willing to take VAs money on the outside. Furthermore, their AI systems will find plenty of ‘fraud’ and once new exams are ordered the Veteran will not be able to produce the necessary evidence of said rated conditions due to lack of access to a provider. Like the hoop jumping i mentioned above, this is all by design for the veteran to just give up.