Tim Leeds Havre Daily News tleeds@havredailynews.com
The director of veterans health care in Montana said on Veterans Day that a Veterans Affairs clinic is in the last stages of preparing to open in Havre and, barring any complications, will be operating early next year. “By the first part of January, by Jan. 5, we’ll be open in Havre,” VA Healthcare Montana Director Joe Underkofler said Tuesday. Underkofler’s address keynoted Veterans Day ceremonies in Havre, starting with a ceremony by the VFW Memorial Wall at the Town Square followed by ceremonies in the VFW Club. Underkofler addressed a crowd in the VFW Club including many who came in after braving the cold weather at the memorial wall. The announcement comes after years of attempts to get a local clinic, highlighted last year by a push by Havre veteran Merrill Lundman including collecting signatures up and down the Hi-Line. Lundman forwarded the signatures to the VA Montana Healthcare, the national Veterans Affairs Administration and the congressional delegation, complaining that while Cut Bank and Lewistown recently were awarded clinics, thousands of veterans on the Hi-Line still had to drive to Great Falls or farther to receive care subsidized by the VA. Lundman died in December 2007, barely a month before the VA announced it would build a clinic in Havre. The original plan of the VA was to create a contract clinic where local health providers would serve qualified veterans and be reimbursed by the VA for eligible services. In August, after requesting and receiving proposals including those by Northern Montana Hospital and Bullhook Community Health Center, the VA announced it was re-examining the option to see if a clinic staffed by VA personnel would be more efficient. That is the model opening in Havre. Underkofler said a physician has been hired and is in the process of closing down an existing practice to start at the clinic, and more staff is now in the process of being hired. The VA has leased space from Northern Montana Hospital just east of the hospital, in the same complex housing the dental offices of Drs. Michael Shelby and Daniel Shelby and the Bullhook Community Medical Center. Underkofler, who was appointed director of the Montana VA Healthcare system in 1992, said Tuesday that it has been a long, hard fight to open new clinics in rural areas of Montana. The culture in Washington, D.C., doesn’t seem to understand the difficulties veterans face traveling long distances to receive care, he said. “It’s been somewhat of a hard road, not just in Havre,” he said. He said, for example, when he talked to federal administrators about putting a clinic in Havre, he was told that Lewistown isn’t that far from HavrenHi-Line veterans could go there. “I said there aren’t any roads from Havre to Lewistown,” Underkofler said, adding that he tried to explain that there are some mountains in the way. He commended the work of Montana’s congressional delegation in the approval of the Havre clinic. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester and Rep. Denny Rehberg were key in persuading the Washington administrators to approve it, Underkofler said. “They helped the (Veterans Affairs) secretary see the light,” he said. Without the push from local residents, the change wouldn’t have happened, Underkofler said. VA has a threshold if an area has fewer than 1,500 veterans, the VA won’t open a clinic. The census of the Havre area was 200 short, with 1,300 veterans, he said. “It took that extra pressure from you folks and the delegation,” Underkofler said. He said the work is continuing since he took over the VA Montana Healthcare the number of VA facilities has grown to 11, with Havre being the 12th. New clinics recently opened in Cut Bank last year and in Lewistown in July, and Underkofler said he hopes the number will soon grow to 15. He said other grassroots efforts have had recent success. One led to the creation of Liberty House in Fort Harrison near Helena, where the VA Hospital is located. Family members of veterans receiving treatment at the hospital can stay at that location. Tvs for Vets, a grassroots effort started by veteran Dan Koehl, has also been successful, Underkofler said. The fundraising organization raised more than $90,000 to help the VA install new televisions in the VA hospital and other facilities. Underkofler said that grassroots effort to help each other is typical in Montana, maybe more so than anywhere else in the nation. Montanans and Montana veterans go out of their way to help, he said. “They take the time to care for one another,” Underkofler said. “It doesn’t matter who you’re helping, it’s that you're helping one another.”
