Improvements underway for after-hours call center support | va puget sound health care | veterans affairs

SEATTLE , WA — The Department of Veterans Affairs and its Pacific Northwest Headquarters (VISN20) is expanding telephone access to Veterans utilizing VA health care facilities in Washington,

Idaho, Oregon and Alaska. VA’s Health Connect Call Center serving Veterans within VISN20 is actively building services to support telephone access to VA care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This means VISN20 will handle all incoming calls and will no longer utilize VISN10’s (serves the lower peninsula of Michigan, Ohio/Northern Kentucky and Indiana) call center after regular

business hours. The number Veterans typically use to call their VA facility in VISN20 will now route to the VISN20 Health Connect Call Center automatically. During this transition while new

staff are hired and trained, VA will continue to offer medical support limited to Nurse Triage. For administrative needs, such as scheduling and messages to a Primary Care Team as well as

medication services will be offered during the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (local time), Monday through Friday. As VA continues expanding, Veterans should be aware that wait times after hours

may be prolonged. VA’s goal is to provide around the clock support to meet the Veterans needs in a timely manner, and VA is striving to make this happen in the coming months. For more

information, please contact VA Puget Sound at 1-800-329-8387. For Veterans in Crisis, please use the Veterans Crisis line at 1-800-273-8255 (press 1). VA Puget Sound provides comprehensive

care to more than 155,000 Veterans across the Pacific Northwest—approximately 120,000 are enrolled with a primary care team at one of its 10 care sites: two main campuses (American Lake and

Seattle), six outpatient clinics (Edmonds, Mount Vernon, Olympia, Port Angeles, Puyallup and Silverdale) and two Community Resource & Referral Centers (Georgetown in Seattle and Renton).

As the VA’s 4th largest research program, VA Puget Sound has research in virtually every major clinical department, including: TBI and multiple blast exposures; memory improvement and

Alzheimer's Disease; PTSD and deployment health; Parkinson’s Disease; diabetes; cancer; substance abuse; lower limb prosthetics; genomics; and Health Services. Additionally, it has

seven nationally recognized Centers of Excellence (in areas from limb-loss prevention and prosthetic engineering to primary care education and substance abuse treatment). For more

information visit www.va.gov/puget-sound-health-care.