By By SHIRLEY SMITH
Special to the Daily News
My son, Jeremy Goodman, has come as close to paying the ultimate sacrifice for his country as is possible.
He haas been a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and at the Durham, Richmond and Tampa Veterans Affairs hospitals for the past three years and four months. He was recently discharged from the Tampa VA hospital.
The VA is trying to work out a program for Jeremy that will reimburse a local primary care provider at 100 percent on the Fee Basis Program.
Because this is a federal program, and due to the heavy load of initial paperwork involved, we are unable to find a local primary-care provider to accept him as a patient.
During Jeremy’s convalescence, we have met many great and understanding people and organizations, but even with their help we do not seem to be able to clear the seemingly unsurmountable hurdle of paperwork.
If we had a local primary-care provider, Jeremy would not have to travel the distances to various VA hospitals, with each trip being a stressful and painful burden on him.
A primary-care provider would be able to treat Jeremy for minor problems, write prescriptions and make referrals to specialists, if necessary. They would also coordinate with the VA.
We know if we could find a local physician, once the paper work is completed on the first visit, the follow-up visits would not be so involved with paperwork.
We have made numerous attempts to locate a local family physician to be our primary-care provider, but none of our efforts have been successful. I have made several calls, and none of them have returned my calls.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.