Who's Who: Veterans Integrated Service Networks
MMT 2010 Volume: 14 Issue: 1 (February)
Veterans Integrated Service Networks
This guide aims to provide readers with a useful overview of the VA’s 21 VISNs, including their facilities, locations and contact information. VISNs provide care to more than 5.5 million veterans each year, including post-combat care that the Veterans Health Administration says is the best ever provided to veterans anywhere. Advances include polytrauma care, innovative treatments for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and a broad expansion in services provided through community-based outpatient clinics and mobile vet centers.
The VHA has also sought to transform its mental health care system, adding 4,000 mental health care workers and improving its prevention program, which includes a new telephone hotline that VHA says has already rescued more than 4,000 veterans at imminent risk of suicide.
For those wondering whether the absence of a VISN 13 or VISN 14 reflects a superstitious frame of mind, VA public affairs officials note only that the VHA system previously included 22 VISNs, but that 13 and 14 were combined to create VISN 23.