Veteran Experience
Veteran Experience consists of our Veteran Experience Officer and Patient advocates. At the Lexington VA Health Care System, they are specially trained to help Veterans and their families resolve issues with care. If you've experienced any issues that you haven't been able to resolve by talking with your care team, please reach out.
Connect with a patient advocate
Care we provide at Lexington VA Health Care System
Lexington VA Health Care System (LVAHCS) is committed to an experience where care is delivered in a way that is smooth and easy for Veterans; we want to make your experience at our facilities easy & effective, but most importantly, we want to honor your service! They offer help with:
- Patient concerns with the care team
- Advocating for patient and family rights
The Veterans Experience Office was established at LVAHCS in 2019 to oversee and assist the health care system in collaborations across VA sub-agencies, VHA program offices, and local health care community providers. Veterans Experience Officer leads, facilitates, and collaborates on patient experiences at LVAHCS to improve efforts and initiatives. The VEO manages and oversees patient experience action plans at the facility while also collaborating with Human Resources on employee experience initiatives.
The Patient Advocate program was specifically designed to manage the complaint and compliment process, including complaint resolution, data capture and analysis of issues/complaints. They communicate this information to facility leadership to help drive system improvements. Patient Advocates assist front line staff in resolving issues that occur at the point of service and address complaints that were not able to be resolved at the point of service. Facility Patient Advocates work directly with Service Chiefs and Service management to facilitate resolution to problems beyond the scope of front-line staff, and participate in resolution of system problems by presenting the patient’s perspective of the problem and desired resolution.
LVAHCS uses a decentralized model for advocacy where Patient Advocate Liaisons (PALs) are available within each department or clinical area to resolve concerns at the point-of-care. This model seeks to resolve Veteran issues at the lowest level possible.
Patient Advocate Liaisons (PALs) are employees designated at the service level, or point of service, who assist in resolving issues after first attempts at resolution have not been successful. A PAL resolves Veteran issues as a collateral duty, working in collaboration with the facility Patient Advocate staff to identify opportunities for improvement. All PALs are granted access to enter data into the patient advocate tracking system – replacement (PATS-R).
If you, or a Veteran you care for has not been able to resolve important issues related to VA through other means of communication, please contact one of our highly-skilled staff members who will be eager to help you in a timely manner.