Vets to get cancer care in Indy

Regional official says treatment there costs less, but there's no system to decide who will be referred.

Some local veterans with cancer who would have been treated in Fort Wayne in the past will soon be referred to Indianapolis for care.

Just who will be affected is unclear. But Robert Beller, acting director of the VA Northern Indiana Health Care System, which includes Fort Wayne and Marion, said the decision to have certain patients travel to the Roudebush Veterans Administration Medical Center is the right one "because that is less costly," and is a better use of the capacity and resources available in Indianapolis.

But a local physicians group, which has provided radiation therapy for area VA patients for 25 years, says sending veterans to have their cancer treated 120 miles away is not in the best interest of the patient and is more costly in the long run.

Fort Wayne Radiation Oncology has a contract with the VA to treat 50 cancer patients a year at the local VA hospital or its outpatient clinic, or at Parkview Radiation Oncology. If the number surpasses 50 - as it has the past three years - the VA pays an additional amount for each patient.

Who goes, who stays

Dr. John Crawford, an oncology group member and a Republican on City Council, said the VA has told the group it will refer those additional patients to Indianapolis.

He is concerned there is no system in place to decide which patients will go to Indianapolis and which will receive treatment here.

Beller said the VA has no intention of ignoring individual needs of veterans.

"We're not saying, ‘You're No.51 and you're off to Indianapolis.' That's not going to happen."

Prostate cancer patients, Beller said, are among those likely to be sent to Indianapolis. Such patients undergo radiation treatments every day, five days a week, for four to six weeks.

"Let's take 10 prostate cancer patients," Crawford said. "Let's make them go to Indy. They could live next door to the place here, but they'd have to go to there. It will come out of the Indianapolis (VA) budget to treat them. It will be more expensive because treatment in Indianapolis is more expensive."

Beller disagrees. Sending cancer patients to the Indianapolis VA, he said, is less costly because oncologists are on staff there.

The Fort Wayne site, however, has to pay outside oncologists to treat patients.

Generally speaking, patients with few other health problems will be sent to Indianapolis, Beller said.

The oncology group is giving the VA a break, Crawford said, charging it about half what it bills private insurers or managed-care organizations.

The group would be willing to negotiate a different contract to include more than 50 patients.