U.S. Public Health Service

U.S. participation in the First World War produced a shift away from relying on long-term institutional care for Veterans in need to a model of Veteran welfare centered around short-term hospitalization. During the war, the War Department assumed responsibility for tending to the sick and wounded. Afterwards, when the Army dismantled its hospital system, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) stepped in to fill the breach, acquiring numerous facilities the Army and Navy no longer wanted as well as other properties that could be used for medical purposes.

After World War II, the Veterans Administration faced a dire shortage of nurses. During the war, thousands of nurses and doctors left their positions in VA hospitals to join the armed forces. In early 1944 VA Administrator General Frank T. Hines reported a shortfall of roughly 1,000 nurses in 88 of the VA’s 94 hospitals.

After the United States entered World War I in 1917, the government hastily built new facilities both to train Army medical personnel and to provide care for soldiers wounded during the fighting or stricken with disease. Oteen Veterans' Hospital was one of these.

VA manages more than 1,700 historic properties, but none older than the Grist Mill and Mansion House on the campus of the Perry Point VA Medical Center in Maryland.

The present-day Bob Stump VA Medical Center campus in Prescott, Arizona has had a long and interesting history from the time the Arizona Territory was created in 1863. Established as Fort Whipple, the facility transitioned over many years to an eventual VA Medical Center campus.

President Warren G. Harding made a commitment to streamline and improve benefit services for the millions of World War I Veterans in the U.S. In August of 1921, he signed the bill creating the Veterans Bureau, the first independent federal agency to manage all facets of Veterans care. The legacy of the Veterans Bureau lives on in the modern VA, which continues its forerunner’s tradition of service to Veterans and their dependents.