Page 19 - Mobility Management, February 2017

Making VMSA a Reality
Well, for starters...the VMSA.
To understand the work that still needs to happen on that
front, and why, it’s best to start with exactly what the VMSA mandates.
“The meat of the legislation is now that the Veterans Mobility Safety Act is law, the VA is required to establish quality and safety standards for automobile adaptive equipment and installations within their AAE [Automobile Adaptive Equipment] program,” Schoppman says.
“There currently are no such enforceable standards, and [members of VA] are operating with a handbook that was last updated in the year 2000. So you can imagine the advances in technology that have been made: Now you can modify all sorts of vehicles, whereas in 2000, it was pretty much limited to the minivan, and it was sort of the old, clunky, raised-roof kind of deal. That’s not the situation we are presented with today. There are a lot of options for individuals who would like to pursue the
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independence of driving despite some sort of mobility limitation that they might have.”
The lack of an up-to-date policy handbook in itself is a practical concern, Schoppman adds. “The idea of the VA just updating that handbook to come into concert with the technical and consumer reality of today, I think is a good thing. But in addition to that, part of the [VMSA] requirement is that the handbook include stan- dards for equipment and standards for installation. The absence of those standards has really diminished the quality of VA healthcare generally, and it has also raised some pretty serious safety concerns for veterans and their families, as well as the general driving public: lifts falling off of vehicles, malfunctioning hand controls, vehicle fires resulting from poor electrical wiring because the technician hadn’t completed any sort of basic electrical training.
“That’s not good for anyone. And I think the American public would agree that not only do our veterans deserve a higher standard of care, but our tax dollars should be spent on quality equipment and safe workmanship. The Veterans Mobility Safety Act is what we think will get us to that point. The regulations that are developed will lead to increased safety and quality of VA healthcare within the auto adaptive equipment program, as well as common-sense stewardship of tax payer funds.”
Schoppman says pursuing legislation was not NMEDA’s first choice, and that in meetings, VA representatives did acknowledge that the agency’s handbook needed updating and that quality standards made sense. Unfortunately, those actions were not among the agency’s priorities, and therefore the industry saw no movement forward for years.
Thus, H.R. 3471.
“We actually tried for five years to come to a non-legislative solution, working with VA prosthetics directly, and NMEDA and its representatives would meet with them annually,” Schoppman said. “You learn over time that some things need to be legislated, and this was one of them.”
Developing Those Quality Standards
VA will need to develop quality standards, according to VMSA mandate, and one of the questions Schoppman was asked by members of Congress and their staffers was whether the bill was really just an effort by NMEDA to force VA to purchase adapted vehicles from NMEDA dealers.
“I think we cleared that up pretty quickly by letting them know that the answer was no,” Schoppman said. “If that were what we were trying to do, we would have required that VA adopt NMEDA QAP [Quality Assurance Program], which we never suggested that they do. Quite frankly, the QAP standard, which is really the gold standard for the industry, would likely be too high for a government agency to apply nationally.”
Schoppman said a major factor for NMEDA was making sure veterans in more remote areas would retain access to adapted vehicles after the VMSA passed.
“We’ve always kept in our minds the concern for veterans living in rural areas,” she says. “If the only provider within
50 miles of a veteran in Louisiana is not a NMEDA provider,
we don’t want the veteran to go without. So the VA-developed standards will almost certainly be lower than the NMEDA QAP standard. [The VA version] is going to be a minimum standard in
mobilitymanagement | february 2017 19