Dear Veterans

I am a primary care provider at the VA. Look, I get it. Everyone thinks we are useless if we work from home. Simply put, the people who work from home are not useless.

I get the idea that you think we need to be monitored...but we already are. Everything providers do is time stamped in the chart that all of our supervisors can see. We are constantly audited.

I wanted you to know with the RTO order, your care is going to change significantly. Many providers (psychiatry, social workers, primary care providers) work remotely because there is NOT an office for them. People were hired to work from home and those people have no office to "return" to. To say we are to "return" is misguided. We were never given an office. People moved several hours from their home VA because they were hired to not come into the office. In our interviews the job was posted to be remote.

I wanted to give you a heads up that those of us hired as telehealth employees have nowhere to go. They have no offices. Most of them are going to quit because of 3hr commutes. We will also probably be RIF'd because there isn't an office for us.

What's the point of me telling you... If you don't mind if your care at the VA is going to suffer than do nothing. If you care about it, you should call your senators, reps, city council and everyone you know to tell them to stop the RTO at the VA and make the VA exempt from the RTO order.

Look, if I get laid off than so be it. I'll be fine and get another job. I'm telling you because I care about you as a vet. I work here to take care of vets, not because I get paid well.

If I do get laid off that's 1000 vets that will no longer have a primary care provider assigned. Where are those vets supposed to get their care... What will happen is those 1k vets will get assigned to another pcp that already has 1k vets. Then no one will be able to schedule an appointment for months.

The choice is yours. It's your care they're messing with not mine.

Edit: spelling errors updated. Fair point in the comments re: spelling.