August 6, 2009, Fort Campbell, KY - Medical officials at Fort Campbell say they are working to improve access to health care for soldiers and their families and to address complaints about driving long distances to get treatment.

The Army's medical leaders are trying to balance the needs of a rising number of injured soldiers returning from war with the capacity of doctors and staff at their military hospitals. At Fort Campbell, many units have completed third and fourth tours and the installation has hundreds of soldiers assigned to its wounded warrior unit.

During meetings at Fort Campbell this week, hospital staff and representatives from the Army and Tricare, the military health insurance program, took questions from family members and soldiers.

"We have problems with access," said Col. Kenneth Canestrini, who works for the Army surgeon general's office overseeing the Tricare program. "The U.S. Army recognizes that. It's a fluid environment and we are working on it."

One complaint from military members and their families was that sometimes they had to drive long distances away from the installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line to get certain treatment, officials said.

Blanchfield Army Community Hospital serves over 100,000 people in the Fort Campbell area, and officials say constantly rotating troops in and out of combat has greatly increased the demand for treatment. To reduce the number of people waiting for appointments, the military can send patients to civilian hospitals in the nearby communities and to contracted health providers.

"If we cannot take care of the patients within our standards of access, they are to turn to the network and offer the patient to go downtown for care," Canestrini said.

While many patients are being treated in Clarksville, Tenn., just outside the post, hospital officials say some patients are being sent as far as Nashville, about 70 miles southeast, to get certain types of treatment. The one hour-plus drive each way for a doctor's appointment can be difficult for working families who may have a spouse overseas.

Doug Williams, chief operating officer for Tricare's Regional Office North, which covers Fort Campbell, said the number of local doctors who have been taking military patients has grown significantly. Since January the number of behavioral health providers treating patients from Fort Campbell jumped from 51 to 100, he said.

But there are some specialties that can't be found close to the installation because it's a medically underserved area, Williams said.

"When you hear people say, ‘I had to drive an hour and a half to get there,' when you dig down further, you find that it is for endocrinology or some other sub-specialty that just isn't available here," Williams said.

Dr. Bret Logan, the deputy commander for managed care and compliance at the hospital, said primarily the patients that are being sent to Nashville are for pediatric specialties, high-risk pregnancies and high-end care like oncology, chemotherapy and advanced diseases.

"We do not send the vast majority of our standard care to Nashville," Logan said.

While the hospital has been expanding and an $80 million renovation plan over the next several years should help, Col. John Cook, the hospital's commander, said it's been increasingly hard to recruit physicians and doctors into the Army.

The Army has to compete against salaries offered by for-profit health care companies on top of the fact that combat tours for medical staff are becoming the norm.

"Over the last several years, providers in our hospital know that it's a short amount of time before they have to deploy," Cook said.

Soldiers and their families expect they will be treated by fellow soldiers in a military hospital, but that scenario is changing, Cook said. These days, Cook said the majority of personnel in Army hospitals is not military.

But Cook said he's been hearing from spouses that they are happy with the quality of the health care they are getting through the military.

"We need to do a better job of marketing that great care and the options that are there," he said.

Army Times