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Newly released health-care rankings confirm that the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix remains among the worst in the nation nearly three years after it became the epicenter of a national VA crisis. Internal VA documents leaked to USA Today, and later supplemented with officially approved data, show the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center has a one-star score in a rating system where five stars is the top result. In a series published in October on VA reform efforts, The Arizona Republic divulged Phoenix VA Health Care System's bottom ranking, but did not show scores for the system's nearly 150 other hospitals. (Wagner, 12/7)

Active military members, veterans and those around them have mental health care and substance abuse treatment options around the state. There are more than 500,000 veterans living across Tennessee, and an estimated 20 percent of them have a mental health disorder diagnosis, said Marie Williams, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services. The size of Tennessee's veteran population ranked 14th in the country in 2015, according to federal data. Treatment of mental health disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, are increasingly important to the Veterans Health Administration. But VA hospitals in Nashville and Murfreesboro scored poorly in an internal performance evaluation for mental health care. (Fletcher, 12/7)