WASHINGTON -- To better address the needs of nearly 100,000 veterans infected with hepatitis C or HIV, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently established a new field office in West Haven, Conn., that will provide front-line perspective to the national program.
Dr. Michael Rigsby, an infectious disease physician at the VA Medical Center in West Haven and associate professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, will direct the new program office for hepatitis C and HIV. A graduate of Yale medical school, Rigsby has been a VA doctor since 1993. Last year, he worked on several new national hepatitis C initiatives.
"VA has really set the standard for how large health care organizations can respond to the needs of patients with HIV and hepatitis C," said Rigsby, who has conducted VA research in viral infections and regularly provides clinical care to patients. "As the largest provider of medical care to these patients in the United States, our success will be a model for the rest of the health care system."
Although based in West Haven, Dr. Rigsby is part of a newly created Public Health Strategic Health Care Group led by Dr. Lawrence Deyton in Washington, D.C. This group also includes the Center for Quality Management in HIV and Hepatitis located in Palo Alto, Calif.
"The fact that a large portion of our organization is field-based is a special strength in the program," said Deyton. "It keeps us in touch with day-to-day needs of front-line providers and permits us to take advantage of the diversity and breadth of experience across the system."
VA is the nation's largest single provider of both HIV and hepatitis C care in the United States. Last year, more than 19,000 veterans received care for HIV and nearly 80,000 for hepatitis C. Additionally, VA conducts the largest voluntary HIV testing program in the country with more than 50,000 tests performed last year. It has established the largest hepatitis C screening and testing program in the world, having screened or tested more than two million veterans in the past two years.
