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Mountain Home takes progressive stance on medical needs of female veterans

 

Linda Flynn receives the Army Commendation Medal at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in 1984.

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Linda Flynn remembers returning to Johnson City years ago on leave from the military and becoming sick.

She went to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Mountain Home, for care and was told the hospital was only for veterans.

She was a veteran, she said. Flynn joined the military in the 1970s and was among the first female service members to fire weapons, throw grenades and participate in the same physical fitness tests as male recruits. She helped evacuate military personnel and others as the Vietnam war wound down.

She did get to see a doctor that day in the early 1990s. And shortly after that a Congressional mandate was given for VAs across the country to provide specific care for women veterans. Now, Flynn uses the VA here and its womenonly wing for most of her medical needs.

“I really like it,” Flynn said of the VA’s medical care. “It’s nice to know that there is somewhere that deals specifically with women’s issues.”

The care for female veterans was not always available, but Mountain Home’s attitude toward providing care for its female patients has been progressive.

“When you think about the VA, traditionally it was seen as a man’s environment and everything was kind of geared to that,” said Judi East, chief of staff for women’s health at Mountain Home. “So we had a lot of women that were a little reluctant to come in to that environment. So we went out, did health fairs, recruited, talked to VFWs and American Legions and things like that to encourage women to come here.”

In the early 1990s, when the VA first began to realize that the military’s female veterans needed specialized care, the only services the VA offered were pap smears and mammograms. At that time Dr. Carl Gerber was the director of Mountain Home. He realized that female veterans would be increasing and care would need to be provided before the Congressional mandate.

“It was something that he envisioned that this was going to happen and he wanted to be ahead of the curve,” East said.

Susan Grover also gets care from the women’s health wing at Mountain Home.

“It’s funny because people just assume that veterans are going to be the men,” Grover said. Grover joined the Army Reserves in 1987. She was called up in 1990 to be deployed in support of Operation Desert Storm. “It was kind of a unique situation for me because I grew up in Kuwait,” Grover said.
She was part of a humanitarian mission taking care of refugees. Grover was a nurse in a pediatric unit in Kuwait.

According to recent statistics, females make up 14.5 percent of America’s active military force. That number is expected to increase.

“They’re expecting even more because women veterans are the fastest growing population that there is right now,” East said.

East alone sees about 960 patients herself, and said there are about 1,600 female veterans who partake of the services offered in the women’s wing at Mountain Home.

Today, female veterans can get care for nearly every medical need they would have, including pre-natal care and infertility studies and counseling services.

“It’s grown a lot,” East said of the programs for female veterans. “We’ve got a lot of services that are available here that they didn’t have when I came.”

East said Mountain Home is rated as one of the top VAMCs in the nation for providing a large space dedicated solely to the care of female veterans, including a separate waiting room. She said Mountain Home strives to provide quality care because the veterans expect it.

“We have a lot of people that drive a long way to come here just because it is a very special place,” East said.

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