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Continuing a legacy: VA medical center in Iron Mountain celebrates women veterans

From left, Marine Corps Veteran Jennifer Nylander has her blood drawn by Wendy Schuster, LPN, at the Marquette VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic located at 1414 West Fair Ave. The Marquette VA Clinic is part of the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center of Iron Mountain. (Photo courtesy of Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center)

IRON MOUNTAIN — For over 70 years, the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center in Iron Mountain has served veterans across the Upper Peninsula and beyond. With March being Women’s History Month, the center invites women to continue that legacy.

The Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center oversees seven community-based outpatient clinics in Ironwood, Hancock, Manistique, Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, Menominee and Rhinelander, Wisconsin. These clinics are located to serve veterans in rural communities, which entails 66% of the veterans that the medical center sees, said John S. Jamison, an assistant public affairs officer.

Altogether, the clinics and the medical center served 23,129 veterans in 2019. The Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center has the largest geographic patient service area east of the Mississippi River, as it covers over 26,000 square miles, encompassing 15 Michigan counties and nine counties in northeastern Wisconsin, Jamison said.

“As our motto states ‘Focused on Excellence — Putting Veterans First,’ we are focused on providing the best care for those who have served; now and in the future,” Jamison said. “We are expanding some services for our inpatient veteran care. We are also expanding our CBOCs to meet the needs of those veterans who need care in the more rural areas.”

Currently, the medical center has 1,383 female veterans enrolled, Jamison said.

The center offers services directed toward women veterans, such as comprehensive gender-specific primary and specialty care, mental health services, disease prevention and screening, maternity care coordination and urgent care services.

Maternity services include education, tools, childbirth preparation, breastfeeding support and lactation classes, breast pumps and other supplies along with care for the newborn during the first seven days after birth.

“By having trained, gender-specific providers at the medical center and each of our community clinics, we can offer our women veterans comprehensive care in a single visit,” Women Veterans Program Manager Barbara Robinson, RN, of the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical, said in a press release.

As a primary and secondary level care facility with 17 acute care, general medicine beds, the main facility has an Urgent Care Center and a surgical department with Basic Ambulatory Surgery designation.

With higher-level emergency and critical care cases, the center coordinates that care with hospitals in both the local community and at larger VA medical centers. The center houses a 40-bed Community Living Center, or CLC, which entails extended care and short-term rehabilitation, geriatric care, general nursing home care; short term wound care and hospice/palliative care, according to the clinic’s website.

Community is the main driver in service, Jamison noted.

“We like to make the CLC their home away from home while they are with us. Services provided are general medical services, physical therapy, and mental health services,” Jamison said. “Approximately 70% of the veterans are respite and short-term rehabilitation. While the other 30% is long-term nursing care.”

The medical center also provides ambulatory and acute health care that range from audiology, diabetes, dentistry, geriatrics and extended care, general medicine, home-based primary care, mental health, oncology, orthopedics to physical and occupational therapy, prosthetics, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, surgery and women’s wellness.

Primarily, the Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center tends to veterans but there are also some benefits that are afforded to spouses of veterans who meet certain requirements but that comes on a space-available basis, Jamison said.

Women make up approximately 10% of veterans the VA serves across the nation. That statistic is set to increase, as 20% of the United States’ military forces members are women.

“For the Department of Veterans Affairs, Women’s History Month means more than just celebrating our women veterans — it means making sure they’re proud of the role we play in the remaining chapters of their story,” VA Chief of Staff Pam Powers said in a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs press release. “We will continue to build on the legacy that America’s women veterans have carved out by listening to them, respecting them and serving them with the dignity this country owes them.”

The Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center is located at 325 E. H St. Iron Mountain. For more information regarding women’s health care, call the Women Veterans Call Center at 855-829-6636 or visit womenshealth.va.gov.

Jackie Jahfetson can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is jjahfetson@miningjournal.net.

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