Dallas branch of Veterans Affairs outpatient pharmacy dedicates new wing

by Brian Allen of TODAY Newspapers

Dallas CMOP, which leases space in Lancaster’s Longhorn Business Park, opened in 1994 as the fourth CMOP.

A number of dignitaries, many veterans among them, were in Lancaster June 11 as the Dallas branch of the VA’s Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy dedicated a new wing.

The CMOP facility as VA officials affectionately call it, is one of seven throughout the U.S. These began as a test project after experiments in the 1970s and ’80s with consolidating mail prescription workloads.

VA dispenses 80 percent of all prescriptions through the CMOP program. CMOP uses the Postal Service to deliver 95 percent of the 45 million prescription packages they ship a year.

Dallas CMOP, which leases space in Lancaster’s Longhorn Business Park, opened in 1994 as the fourth CMOP. Its original equipment allowed it to produce five million prescriptions annually, but in 2006 a new piece of equipment allowed it to triple its production.

Millions of veterans including Mayor Joe Tillotson use the facility to order their prescriptions through the mail.

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary R. James Nicholson gave the keynote speech, reminding those in attendance of how important it is to remember veterans’ contributions.

“This is a special occasion for us at the VA because of the importance of this facility, the importance of the work you all do, the work for us and for our veterans.”

He recounted an anecdote from one of the nation’s most famous veterans, George Washington. Nicholson told of “Southern gentleman” Washington’s first impressions of the men that would become the Continental Army.

“Are these Yankees ever ornery,” Washington wrote in his journal. “I sure hope they scare the British because they scare the heck out of me.”

Washington wrote those words, somewhat in jest, in 1775. Nicholson said as Washington turned over control of that same army in 1783, he reminded this newly formed nation “to honor their debt to those people who achieved its independence.”

Washington would come to that theme again as America’s first president, saying, “The real mark of a society is the measure of how it treated those that have achieved its freedom.”

Nicholson said this CMOP is an important way the VA makes sure those commitments to veterans are honored. He noted an occasion on which the Dallas CMOP cranked out 7,000 prescriptions in a single hour. The secretary said in his opinion the VA is the best healthcare system in the nation today, due to hardworking people like the ones at the Dallas CMOP.