The VA Black Hills Health Care System has announced that its Hot Springs campus is scheduled to be part of the Veterans Health Administration’s National Call Center. The move will bring 120 jobs to the area but won’t impact healthcare services the VA currently provides to veterans at its Hot Springs location.
The Veterans Health Administration’s Members Services department currently has 5 national call centers in Georgia, New York, Kansas and Texas.
VA Black Hills Health Care System director Sandra Horsman says the sole purpose of the national call center staff is to assist veterans.
“To have veterans be able to reach out to them and ask a multitude of questions about VA benefits…eligibility enrollment…pharmacy needs,” explains Horsman. “Just a myriad of various services the VA provides. So it supports our veterans and in addition I think it’s a great thing for the community as well.”
Recruiting efforts for the national call center positions are currently taking place. Horsman says employee training is expected to begin in January.
“Training for the employees is several weeks long,” Horsman observes. “It’s a very intensive training because these are entry level positions. So they are going to do very intensive onn-on-one training…computer training…phone training with them.”
Horsman notes that the National Call Center is unrelated to the VA Black Hills Health Care System’s in-house call center. Nor is it related to proposed plans for reconfiguring veterans services at the Hot Springs campus.
She says all options for future use of the Hot Springs site were taken into account before a decision was made to host the national call center.