Gary Zuber, Jose Lopez, Director of Kern County Veterans Services Dept. met, Kern Valley Hospital CEO Tim McGlew. Photos by Catherine Stachowiak
The hospital has been working with the Veterans Administration to provide health care to Kern Valley veterans and their families so that local veterans would not have to jump through a lot of hoops of bureaucracy to get medical attention.
Jose Lopez, the Director for Kern County Veterans Services Department met, Thursday January 9, with Kern Valley Hospital Chief Executive Officer, Tim McGlew, at the VFW Honor Flight Breakfast to finish fine tuning the last details of the arrangements.
Gary Zuber, outgoing Man of the Year 2024, who is also founder of the Honor Flight Breakfasts in Kern Valley, said he worked on this process for years, with the VA and Kern Valley Hospital to help veterans to attain services in the valley through the VA rather than having to travel distances to attain VA coverage. He knew how difficult it was for veterans to travel long distances for medical assistance.
McGlew told the Kern Valley Sun, “January first we became eligible for caring for the veterans at Kern Valley Hospital. We’re really happy about it. We had signed the Tri West Agreement back on December 5th. And so it allowed them to take care of both the dependent family members as well as the veterans. And so we can do both now and so we’re very happy about that.”
According to McGlew the model changed, from a previous plan for the VA bringing its team up to the valley and using local facilities, to the VA using the staff already located at the clinic of Kern Valley Hospital. And this Tri West Agreement allows this to happen. McGlew said, “This has been three years in the making of trying to get services up here.”
Later Thursday McGlew told the Kern Valley Healthcare District’s board of directors that the agreement is a model that’s not even in Ridgecrest yet, though other hospitals have been launching similar agreements, to help veterans so that they don’t have to go to the VA elsewhere to attain permission before seeking services locally.
McGlew told his board he was grateful to Vince Fong and Samantha Mitchell, Constituent Services Representative from Fong’s staff, for Fong’s support in the process.
McGlew told the board that there are about 900 veterans in the valley. The hospital and VA would be marketing this agreement once marketing details were finalized.
McGlew told the Kern Valley Sun, “We have a transport service; with a grant from Kern Health Systems we bought three vehicles, as well as the staff to run those. And that has allowed us to take patients from their homes to the hospital, to their clinic, to doctor’s appointments, even down to Bakersfield for specialist visits. And this is all part of putting this together. There’s no cost for it.”
McGlew said he spoke with the administrator Gregg Davis at the hospital’s clinic and heard that the veterans have already been coming in and scheduling appointments locally.
McGlew and Lopez were coordinating the details to get the word out to all the veterans.
Lopez said, “We’re very excited that Tim McGlew hasn’t relented on this and that they’re expanding this care to the region. Like he said we’re going to meet to discuss the details. We want to be able to inform all of our residents in Kern County about what the process is going to be. Once we have all that straightened out, we’ll be informing the whole community how to navigate the process.”
McGlew and Lopez both announced to veterans during Honor Flight Breakfast that they would be able to use both inpatient and outpatient services. The plan allows locals to get veterans services more easily. And the two officials were attempting to ensure that VA recipients would be able to get care from doctors locally.
