ICYMI: Fedorchak hosts veterans-focused Fedorchak Forum with VA Secretary Doug Collins

Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) hosted a statewide Fedorchak Forum with U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, connecting with more than 2,000 North Dakotans to discuss access to care, rural health challenges, and ongoing efforts to strengthen veterans' services across the state. The conversation focused on reducing VA backlogs, expanding community care options, improving transportation and reimbursement systems, and delivering more timely, veteran-focused care. Check out the highlights below:

Fedorchak's opening remarks:

• I am a child of a veteran. I grew up as a military child. I wanted to mention that since this is the Month of the Military Child.

• My husband is a proud veteran of the Navy, and he grew up with a father who served in the Air Force.

• We have lived this life, and we are very proud and eager to support our veterans and those who have served our country so well.

• I have co-sponsored 50 bills supporting our veterans.

• I'm a proud co-sponsor of the Major Richard Starr Act. That is a bill that we hear about from all of the Veterans Services Organizations (VSOs). That is a big priority for them. We're hoping to push that through the House.

• We have a number of bills we already have gotten through the House in addition to full funding for the VA.

• As I'm going around the state and visiting with veterans' groups, we hear three big things:

• Access to care,

• Reimbursement payments and timing, and,

• Distance that folks have to travel to the VA facilities in our state.

• We are working on solutions to that.

• Secretary Collins, you have done so much great work for our country. I've heard and talked to you about your priorities at the VA, and I think it's very exciting some of the great work you've already gotten done in terms of reducing the backlog of our veterans who are waiting for decisions on their disability and many other things.

Secretary Collins' opening remarks:

• Thank you for your service to North Dakota and what you're doing there. You stepped in mightily and just already got to work.

• That's a mark of a leader. It's a mark of someone who is taking care of their people.

• I had the privilege of serving with your Governor now, who was a Member of Congress and a dear friend.

• And the rest your delegation-Senators Cramer and Hoeven-North Dakota could not be more well represented, not only on the state level, but the federal level as well.

• I appreciate your service, I appreciate your husband's service, and I appreciate an opportunity to tell you about the good things at the VA.

• The first thing I want to start off with is not only highlighting what the Congresswoman said is our attentiveness to access-especially rural access-issues of transportation, reimbursements, making more facilities available closer to areas, but also making our community care network, which sometimes in rural areas is a little more difficult, but making that easier

• In fact, one of those things that I wanted to highlight is that we are having two openings here in just the next little bit in North Dakota:

• We have grand openings in Grand Forks on April 30th, we're going to be opening a new facility which is going to be larger than the current location. It's going to give more services.

• And then also, just across the border in Minnesota, which also connects some of the issues that y'all have there as well, we're going to be working on those.

• My vision at the VA is that we've taken a very bureaucratic organization and made it focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is veterans.

• We're worried more about, does this help a veteran, their family, and their caregivers, or is it more about us?

• And I have made the determination, and we've sent this down the line for the last year now, the only metric we care about is, is it helping veterans?

• And so far, we've seen some great results:

• We've seen our disability backlog claim, which is 125 days old cases, dropped from 260,000 down to 80,000.

• 130 average days to complete down to 77.

• We've seen from over a million cases when I first got in down to 500,000.

• We're seeing more work with our community care partners-our rural access, telehealth, telemedicine-but also working to expand our community care along with direct care so our rural states and other states as well have access to the best care as possible.

• It's been a difficulty, but it shouldn't be, and we're working to fix it, and that's the transportation reimbursements.

• Scheduling and transportation are two of the biggest issues, especially in areas like yours, that we're working on.

• Again, I'm trying to apply common sense to this and also a veteran-first approach because many times, a veteran will have to go many miles to get an exam, and it also just takes too much time for that to happen.

Secretary Collins on VA funding:

• President Trump is fully committed to our veterans and the VA.

• Aside from DOW, we're the only [department] that actually received our proposed increase for the budget going forward.

• The areas that we're looking to be fully funded is what I talked about earlier about the electronic health records management system, our community care program, and also funding our facilities, which includes building new hospitals and continuing to build out clinics.

• Congress has been always very generous with us as well.

• We're also taking steps to make sure that we're doing everything we possibly can to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar.

• That means we're making sure we have appropriate staffing, not overstaffing, and we're putting money into new technologies and new research that are all designed to help veterans.

• At this point in time, I couldn't be happier with the President's recommendations. We've had good talks with the Appropriations Committee so far, and we're looking forward to those hearings and hopefully that budget getting passed before October 1st.

Fedorchak on community care networks:

• Community care networks are a big deal for North Dakota.

• Having such a large geography and the main medical facility in Fargo, that's a long distance-a good seven to eight hours across to the far northwest corner.

• So that's a lot of travel for our veterans, and that community care network can both help provide better access and reduce costs. I think it's a smart investment and appreciate your focus on that.

Fedorchak on government funding:

• The whole appropriations process this past year has been plagued with multiple government shutdowns, which is something that I really regret and have been opposing.

• I voted to keep the government open multiple times along the way, and most recently this week sent a letter to Speaker Johnson asking him to bring forward a bill that has passed out of committee that would prevent Members of Congress from getting paid-back pay or pay for any days that the government is shut down.

• If we don't get our work done, we shouldn't get paid. That's how it works in the private sector and that's how it should work in government too.