About 40 percent of veterans who receive medical care through the Veterans Health Administration are now covered at urgent care clinics. This expansion of benefits for veterans is part of the Mission Act, which went into effect last month. 

Veterans with a service-connected disability used to have to pay out of pocket if they went to an urgent care facility. Now, if veterans have been waiting for care for a long time, or if they live far from a VA hospital, they can receive care through private doctors in their local community. 

James McCormick is a veteran in West Virginia, and he’s recently been named the National Junior Vice Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He said the new expansion of benefits could have an especially big impact for veterans in the Mountain State. 

“In an area that’s rural, where the distance to a VA is often 100 miles or more, this is actually a really good thing,” McCormick said.

But he said, not many veterans he’s spoken to are aware that they can now use their VA benefits to go to urgent cares.

“It needs to be better communicated. Not all of them know about it. Very few in the mainstream know about it.”

According to a press release from the Beckley VA Medical Center, the new urgent care benefit is meant to give veterans “a convenient way to get treatment for minor injuries and illnesses such as colds, strep throat and pink eye.”

McCormick said that while this new benefit is very helpful, he hopes it doesn’t lead to a funding reduction, or loss of resources for the VA health system.

“We definitely don’t want that to distract or take away from the support or the funding of the existing medical system that we have in place. It’s very important to us as veterans that we have that,” McCormick said.

He said that overall, he’s been happy with the care he’s received through the VA. He suffers from chronic pain, a result of multiple gunshot wounds he received while in Iraq, and when he decided to get away from taking opioids, he was able to treat his pain with a specialized alternative type of pain management therapy at the VA in Huntington.

These types of innovative, alternative therapies are what he hopes the VA will continue to put resources into in the future, as well as increased access to local care, so veterans aren’t having to wait to receive medical care.

“So that’s why I was real excited to see this, you know, giving them access to an urgent care system, a local doctor, someone that they could go to and get assistance right away, I think that’s a good step in the right direction, but we still have a few more steps we have to take.”

Although the VA Mission Act passed through Congress with bipartisan support, some Democratic lawmakers say they hope it won’t set a precedent for more privatization of the VA medical system.

This article was originally published by West Virginia Public Broadcasting.