Bringing on those additional staff was a timely move, DeFrancesco said. In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the Dayton VA served just shy of 46,000 veterans, an increase of 3.1% from the previous fiscal year.
A typical year’s increase is closer to 1% to 2%.
And the Dayton VA projects a 4% to 5% increase in veterans seeking services in fiscal year 2025.
“We are ready to meet this moment for our veterans,” she said in an interview.
Federal PACT legislation expanded VA health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxic substances, lengthening the the list of health conditions that the federal government assumes or presumes were caused by exposure to these substances during a veteran’s military service.
It’s considered the biggest expansion of benefits for veterans in decades.
Since the PACT Act’s passage in August 2022, the Dayton VA has enrolled some 40 to 50 new veterans for medical care each week, DeFrancesco said.
The Dayton VA saw more than 525,000 appointments in the last fiscal year, 65,000 more than in FY ‘23, an increase of nearly 14%.
The local VA campus also saw 9% increase in its hospital bed occupancies. It has screened about 37,000 veterans for toxic exposures, and about half of those screens found some level of exposure to toxins, often leading to a change in veterans’ disability ratings.
“The PACT Act was certainly the largest expansion to VA benefits, at least I would say in this generation or in this past decade,” DeFrancesco said.
New patients wait about five to 10 days for a primary care appointments at the Dayton VA.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said Tuesday it cared for more veterans nationally than ever before in fiscal year 2024, exceeding last year’s record totals.
“Veterans deserve the very best from VA and our nation, and we will never settle for anything less,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement. “We’re honored that more veterans are getting their earned health care and benefits from VA than ever before, but make no mistake: there is still work to do.”
Some of the milestones the national VA reported:
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
- VA delivered more than 127.5 million health care appointments, a 6% increase over last year’s record.
- During the last fiscal year, the VA said wait times decreased.
- The VA delivered $187 billion in benefits (including $173 billion in compensation and pension benefits) to 6.7 million veterans and survivors, which represents another record. The VA also processed more than 2.5 million disability benefit claims, a 27% increase over last year’s record.
- More than 796,000 veterans enrolled in VA health care since the PACT Act was signed into law (again, in the summer of 2022) — a nearly 37% increase over the previous equivalent period.
- The VA received 4,414,334 claims for disability compensation benefits over the past two fiscal years — a 29.8% increase over the two years prior.
- The VA housed 47,925 veterans in FY ‘24.
- A record 5,572,495 million people — including 3,981,362 million veterans — are now buried in VA national cemeteries.
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