Summary: This testimony discusses the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) long-standing problems in meeting the health care needs of women veterans and the implications for VA's role in a reformed national health care system. VA has repeatedly stressed the need for delivering better service to women veterans and has issued guidance to its medical centers that responds to problems identified in a January 1992 GAO report. VA's greatest success has been in improving privacy for women veterans. VA has not, however, effectively monitored field facilities to ensure that they have actually improved service for women veterans. For example, even when medical centers submitted inadequate plans for improving breast cancer screenings, VA did not notify the medical centers of its findings. Under VA's health reform proposal, each veteran would be assigned a primary care physician. This step should improve the thoroughness of cancer screenings for women veterans. But real progress in improving service for women veterans depends on the leadership of individual VA medical center directors.
