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Gulf War Syndrome Plan Sought Nethercutt Backs Unified Effort To Combat Mysterious Ailment

By Tracy Ellig tracye@spokesman.com

Doctors tackling Gulf War syndrome may get a new tool to study the disease if Congress cooperates, Rep. George Nethercutt said Wednesday.

When Congress reconvenes in September, it will consider creating a system for doctors to share diagnoses and treatments for the mysterious disease. The system would be created under an amendment Nethercutt sponsored.

A Gulf War syndrome registry currently catalogs veterans’ health complaints, but it doesn’t give physicians any information on treatments being tried around the country, said Ron Porzio, associate director of the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Nethercutt visited the center on Wednesday, meeting with a group of veterans. He also met with Dr. Howard Platter, Spokane Veterans Affairs chief of internal medicine.

The amendment is attached to the Department of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill making its way through Congress.

Nethercutt also updated Platter and the veterans about a change in VA medical center funding.

In the past, VA medical centers received the same amount of money regardless of the number of patients seen. That worked great for hospitals serving fewer patients than average, but not so good for hospitals serving more, like Spokane.

In the past year, the Spokane VA hospital has seen a more than 10 percent increase in patients - from 12,028 to 13,400, Porzio said.

Despite that increase, the center’s $34 million budget has remained fairly static, Porzio said.

Earlier this year, a new system for disbursing VA funds, called Veterans Equitable Resource Allocation, was introduced. The system will essentially make the money follow the veterans.

The change should funnel $10 million to $13 million more to Northwest VA hospitals, including about $1 million for Spokane, Porzio said.

Though VERA is in place, no funding changes will occur until the next appropriations bill is passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton.

, DataTimes