Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Dear Fellow PAs, This is Christopher Lorenc, President of VAPAA, and on behalf of the organization, I am reaching out to you all with this important update about the upcoming conference in Santa Fe, NM.  As we all know, the federal government shutdown has not been affecting our day-to-day clinical responsibilities due to VA’s appropriations schedule, but various benefits have not been extended during this time.  Among the suspended services are VA coverage of travel, and many of us have been learning as of this past Friday, October 3rd that non-essential travel is not being covered at this time. This will of course make it rather difficult for many of us to travel to Santa Fe next month since, even if the shutdown were to lift in one week (which is not currently anticipated), it is unrealistic to expect many facilities and VISNs to schedule flights for all of us within a two-week interval.  As such, last night the VAPAA Board of Directors voted to postpone the conference to March 2-4, 2026.   This date was carefully chosen according to the availability of the Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe, and to accommodate any potential plans our members may have approaching the Spring Break season.  As this is also further into FY2026, any financial issues should be better resolved, while not being too far into the fiscal year to risk such allocations being expended by the time of the conference.  We have also been in close contact over the past few days with the vendors/sponsors about this change, as well as the hotel to ensure that any booking arrangements are appropriately transferred, incurring no penalties as the federal shutdown constitutes a force majeure. For those of you that already have travel booked – especially if you did so out-of-pocket – we advise you to reach out to the booking company (eg the airline) to speak with an agent about this situation to maximize the likelihood of full reimbursement/transfer; we are cautiously optimistic that this can be done for all of you as the hotel and vendors have been quite understanding about this difficult situation.  Also reach out to your facility leadership about how this will affect any leave that you have taken for this (eg if still able to use administrative leave, versus conversion to regular leave or reopening your schedules).  As we get more information from the hotel on how to book reservations in light of this change, we will update you all. I wish to personally thank board member and Conference Chair, Tom Fletcher, as well as our Executive Director, Kent Prickett, for the hard work they have done over the past few days to make this happen, and you can expect notifications from the hotel about these changes.  This is of course quickly evolving, and we will be reaching out with updates as they occur, including changes to conference materials and specific outreach to all of our speakers. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions, as many of you have been over the past week with your valuable input.  We sincerely thank you all for your support, and look forward to further updating you all about this exciting and much-anticipated event. Very respectfully,   Christopher A. Lorenc, PA-C