Response to editorial

We thank the author for their comments, as they reinforce some of the points we hoped to make about clinical aspects of VA ED care. They state in that “perhaps ED visits are not necessarily a failure of public health within VA, but rather an appropriate venue to care for Veterans with health conditions not yet solved by society.” We agree with this statement, and as we noted in the paper, the extensive access veterans have to both psychiatric and medical outpatient care suggests that their high levels of ED use is unlikely to reflect poor access to needed servicers but rather is “primarily attributable to the well-known challenges of treating SMI and its associated medical risks.”
Source: General Hospital Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Short communication Source Type: research