Chris Dillon, a Jupiter resident and Army veteran who served nearly ten years including time in Iraq, says the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center has repeatedly failed to get his medication to him correctly and has scheduled him for appointments where the doctor never showed up. Dillon, who has Guillain-Barré syndrome, a traumatic brain injury, and has experienced seizure-like episodes and falls, says the delays and communication breakdowns amount to a new fight after his time in uniform.
Dillon told CBS12 that his medications were not properly entered into the system or were mailed to him instead of being available for self-pickup. He also said he has sometimes shown up expecting one provider only to find a different one waiting for him, and that he has faced ongoing delays in both mental and physical health care through the medical center.
Helping Dillon navigate the system is Dennis Gelsomino, a Port St. Lucie Air Force veteran who volunteers to help other veterans obtain benefits. Gelsomino, who assists Dillon in accessing care and navigating VA benefits, said VA healthcare rules require patients to be seen within 30 days of requesting an appointment, and that veterans are supposed to be assigned to community care when the VA cannot see them in time.
Community Care Called a Nightmare
Gelsomino did not mince words describing what happens when veterans get pushed toward outside providers, calling community care a nightmare. He said many veterans simply give up pursuing care altogether, worn down by a system that requires enormous amounts of time just to get an appointment or a prescription filled.
Federal rules are supposed to make that outside-care option straightforward. Under access standards tied to the 2019 VA MISSION Act, VA-enrolled veterans become eligible for non-VA community care referrals if VA appointment wait times exceed 20 days for primary or mental health care, or 28 days for specialty care, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The same standards apply if average driving times exceed 30 minutes for primary care or 60 minutes for specialty appointments.
In May 2025, the VA eliminated the requirement for a secondary administrative doctor review when a primary clinician determines a community care referral is in a veteran's best medical interest, a change made under the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act, per the VA. The change was intended to speed up referral approvals, cutting out a bureaucratic step that had previously slowed veterans down.
Veteran Sought Help From Congressman's Office
Dillon said he contacted U.S. Rep. Brian Mast's office for help resolving his case. Mast reopened a dedicated congressional casework office inside the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center back in April 2025, resuming an on-site presence that had assisted more than 500 veterans before being evicted by federal officials in 2019, according to Mast's office. As of CBS12's report, Mast's office had not responded to the station's request for comment on Dillon's case.
The West Palm Beach VA Medical Center itself declined to provide an on-camera interview for the story, CBS12 reported. A VA spokeswoman told the station that the agency would contact Dillon and Gelsomino directly to determine how to help them, though no timeline was given for that outreach.
A System Straining Under Record Enrollment
The complaints out of West Palm Beach land amid a broader surge in demand across the VA system. The agency enrolled more than 200,000 new veterans in healthcare during the first seven months of 2026 alone, a record annual pace that has pushed total new enrollments past 739,000 since the 2022 PACT Act passed, according to Military.com. Federal spending on the VA's Veterans Community Care Program has climbed alongside that growth, reaching $36 billion in fiscal year 2025, up from $31 billion in 2024 and just $8 billion in 2014, making it the fourth-largest healthcare payer program in the country, per U.S. Medicine.
Yet an April 2026 analysis of internal VA data found that despite public statements claiming reduced wait times, performance actually worsened or stagnated across key specialties, including neurology, PTSD treatment, and oncology, at a majority of VA medical centers during early fiscal year 2026, according to Government Executive. The West Palm Beach facility, officially renamed the Thomas H. Corey VA Medical Center in 2024 to honor a paralyzed Vietnam War veteran and local advocate, sits within the VA Sunshine Healthcare Network, the largest regional VA health system in the country, serving more than 1.4 million veterans across Florida, South Georgia and the Caribbean — a network where clinical contact center call volumes surged 84% between 2021 and 2023, Hoodline has previously reported.
As of August 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services assigns the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center an overall quality rating of 3 out of 5 stars, placing its safety and timely-care performance at the national average for acute care hospitals. The facility has also drawn scrutiny before: a 2019 VA Office of Inspector General report cited it for multi-year non-functional security camera systems and inadequate safety protocols following an inpatient suicide on a locked mental health unit, and Hoodline reported on federal murder charges and security concerns raised by Mast after a patient was found strangled at the facility in 2024.
