Thank You Note to Congressional Offices
Please thank the Congressional staff that you met with during the Advocacy Day! You may find a draft thank you note below for guidance. Customize the thank you email by adding any relevant information and/or details from your Capitol Hill meetings, and then send to the Congressional staffer(s) you met with. Their emails can be found in your meeting schedules. This will show appreciation and reinforce your advocacy. If you were on a team, the team leader may send one thank you note on behalf of the group. If you are the sender, please cc the other members of the team on the email.
Thank you note (one per meeting)
Sample Subject Line: Thank You and Follow Up from 5/8 Meeting
Dear [Name of Staffer/Representative/Senator]:
Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me [and additionalparticipants] on May 8th regarding critical measures needed to protect the sustainability of the VA and increase access to mental health services for our nation’s veterans. We are heartened by the interest Congress is showing in mental health issues right now and hope your office will lend support to the proposals we discussed during our meeting, listed below.
Include Telehealth in VA access standards. Excluding telehealth from the access standards has unnecessarily restricted veterans’ access to high-quality health care and has squandered large sums of taxpayer dollars.
Use comparative VA vs. community drive-time and wait-time standards for authorization of care. Existing eligibility criteria allow veterans to receive care from community providers that actually have a longer drive-time or appointment wait-time than what VA could have offered. As an alternative, if veterans were allowed to seek care in the community only when it is closer or faster, the potential cost savings would be $424M to $1.14B annually.
Transfer veterans to VA inpatient units after receiving their emergency care in the community. The largest category of out-of-network care (by expenditure and volume) is for emergency services, accounting for about 30% of community care spending. Of that, 84% is for inpatient care in community hospitals after being transferred from their ED. Rather, veterans should be transferred when stable to their local VA hospital, and when meeting access standards, follow-up care should be delivered by the VHA.
[Please add in any additional information regarding local needs that you may have mentioned in your meeting.]
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any additional questions or require more information. We look forward to continuing to work with you to invest in the VA and improve equitable access to mental and behavioral health services for those who need them most.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to meet with your office.
Sincerely,
[Name/Title]
[University/Institution]
[Address]
(Phone: XXXX)