VA patients paint picture of neglect

[Rose Siding]

bring tissue...

John Hahn lay marooned in his bed last year at the Dallas veterans' hospital, desperately seeking a nurse. An Air Force vet whose terminal bone cancer had made him a paraplegic, Mr. Hahn required turning every two hours.
That day, March 21, he started at 5:30 a.m. pushing his call button, which rang at the nearby nurse's station. No one came. He pushed it throughout the morning and into the afternoon, and still nothing.
...
Even those with major complaints about the hospital praised some individual doctors, nurses and therapists who showed extraordinary devotion to duty. Some singled out the spinal cord injury unit as particularly good.
But many of those interviewed also described deliberate mistreatment at the hands of nurses and support staff. They portrayed much of the medical center as a dirty and ill-equipped institution where patients cry out vainly for aid and others are left to die alone.

Ms. Pritchett, for example, said nurses and aides routinely ignored her bed-ridden father, an 81-year-old Marine veteran of World War II who won the Navy Cross. He wasn't alone in his suffering at the hospital's Transitional Care Unit.

"I would be walking down the hall, and patients would be calling out for me to get help, because the nurses wouldn't answer," Ms. Pritchett said. When she went to nurses to complain, she said, she found them "sitting there having lunch."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/021305dnprova.75ec7.html

Stranova, the guy who runs VA Heart of Texas Health Care Network says the problem definitely isn't "funding or staffing levels".

[BikeWriter]

1. ####!

[bettyellen]

2. my only regret in life was not insisting we transfer my Dad .....

to a better hospital than the local VA before he died. It could have been a lot more comfortable way to go if he was someplace where they had even heard of pallative care.
I was too overwhelmed with grief and completely unknowledgable about the options back then. I wish i had snapped out of it long enough to do better for him.

[Rose Siding]

5. Oh, bettyellen,

We do the best we can with what we know at the time. I am so sorry that you and your dad went through that. I'll take a big leap and bet that he knew how much you cared and that you were a real comfort to him.

These in-depth media stories come out every year or so and I'll never understand why the scandal doesn't create an instantaneous revolution- at LEAST at the polls. Dem or repub, whoever neglects this ONE issue isn't fit to serve.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

3. I have no doubt that the story is true and that

there are plenty of other horror stories at that VA
and probably at every hospital, and these abuses &
this neglect has to be righted, but I just want to say
that I have had nothing but the best care at the VA I have
gone to in Los Angeles for years. Just my experience that
I wanted to offer for what it's worth.

[Rose Siding]

6. Thanks- that's good to know

Perhaps this TX health mgmt company is the direct fault. I seem to recall a similar expose a year or so ago and I believe it was about TX, also.

[Johnyawl]

13. My experience is more in line with your's...

...my father, a WWII vet, died in the VA hospital in Portland Ore in 1984. The care he recieved at that hospital over the last five years fo his life was outstanding. The staff was overworked, but a more professional, caring group would be hard to fine.

I've heard these horror stories about VA hospitals all my life(I've seen Born on the fourth of July), I'm a Vietnam vet, and I'd always said that I'd never go to a VA hospital, but the experience with my Dad changed my mind. The quality of care seems to vary greatly from one location to another.

[Ezlivin]

14. Dallas VA SCI Clinic is tops IMHO

I use the Dallas VAMC as my hospital and the professionals at the SCI Clinic are always good. I've written the hospital administrator to commend these individuals.

I've received decent care at the Memphis VAMC and questionable care at the Tampa VAMC.

I think all veterans should get "chits" allowing them to see any physician, not just the ones at the VA.

[puddycat]

4. Hell, this goes on at regular public hospitals, also. it sucks!

Many nurses treat people, especially old people, like garbage. Unfortunately, the good nurses get burned out even more quickly because of the laziness of the bad ones.

[whodiedandmadeUSgod]

15. I've been a nurse for 16 years

I've met many more nurses with caring and givivg attitudes then negative even though we work continually short staffed. I resent that comment that some nurses treat old people like garbage. I've never known a nurse whom treats elderly people with disrespect. In fact I personally have had my best nursing experiences with the elderly.

[designforce]

7. Here is something many don't know---

I myself use the VA and over the last year, many of the devoted and very good medical staff have been replaced by what I consider under qualified conractors. Just the other day I had an appointment and when I went to the lab to have my blood drawn, I was suprised to see that all the techs were contractors. I hopped into the seat, and the person 'trying' to take my blood had alot of trouble. She had to keep asking the "Civil Serveant" for help. He was not very happy at all, I asked him what was going on while this person was sticking my arm, and he told me that he is expected to make sure these 'contractors' are able to do their job properly. So, to make a long story short, I have noticed alot more contractor personnel who seem under qualified and the professionals I used to deal with are gone. Where I don't know.

Is this the trend in government services to 'contract' out everything?

Apparently you don't have to be qualified or even care, this is what I think happened in the Dallas story.

[fortyfeetunder]

8. Contract out = civil service dissolution/union busting

Welcome to DU design force!

The trend by the US gov't, endorsed by the Bush administration is to get rid of the civil service sector and also to eliminate unions by privatizing as much gov't operations as possible!!

[barb162]

16. welcome to DU! What you write here doesn't surprise me at all

Vets are being treated horribly! Vets should be getting the best care in the world. Bush is cutting benefits everywhere except for the Dept. of Defense and for his rich friends.

[diamond14]

23. here in DC, contract nurses are brought in, their apartments are paid for

and furnished...the 'nurses' are paid very little, but many are please by this temporary arrangement, since they are in the process of giganic family disputes, divorces, bankruptcies, etc.....it's real scary.....

of course, the TEMP agency, that handles all this, makes ALL THE MONEY, huge sums of money...while the temporary employees make little and HAVE NO BENEFITS (no health insurance, no sick leave, no vacation, etc.).....and the temporary employees feel little 'career' connections to the hospitals or their patients....they're just here in DC temporarily, not really part of the 'community' and maybe not even 'credentialed', some are just 2 year nurses, yet assigned to surgical rooms....


and YOUR MEDICAL CARE is in their hands....

[benddem]

9. All VA hospitals and nursing staffs

are not the same. I received outstanding care when I had surgery on my foot. The Bushit administrations budget cuts are bound to make things worse all over. One of my Docs cannot believe what he is supposed to operate on.

[johnaries]

10. Remember the movie "Born on the 4th of July"?

Looks like nothing has changed.

[FreakinDJ]

11. We support the Troops

Now put your sticker where your morality is - Up yours

These fucking freepers and all there yap about supporting the troops. Now look what their fearless chimp in charge has done to our veterans.

My father is in the Old Soilder's home here in Calif. and it is all about the funding. He needed his prostrate operated on and we had to take him to a private funded hospital to get the proceedure done.

That or he would have died

Chimp in Charge has raided the funding so badly for our veterans they are literally dieing waiting to get treatment

Now those folks with the "We support the Troops" sticker, turning a blind eye to the problem the Fearless leader "Chimp in Charge has created can GO FUCK THEIRSELVES

[Supersedeas]

18. I'll second that.

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

12. I've been in some VA hospitals

I'm a quad and in '83 I was in the Houston VA spinal cord ward. When I was first rolled into the ward I was alarmed because it looked like 1953. There was approximately 20 beds on either wall of this immense long room. Soon I discovered that this wasn't a bad thing. If you needed assistance and called out your neighbors would also start calling and hooting until a attendant or nurse showed up. Later they remodeled and later yet a news story came out where a quad was starving because the nurses would plop his meal beside his bed and later would pick it up muttering something about why aren't you hungry mister so and so.

Being turned in the hospital is always a hassle to get someone to do and private rooms don't help. Overall my VA stay was tolerable but I wouldn't say my rehabilitation was as good as I later got at Craig Hospital in Colorado. I managed to get transferred their because it was nearer my home.

[NVMojo]

17. and all Bush is doing is adding more to these rolls ...burn in hell, bush!

[doodadem]

19. Major differences

I've seen Chris Matthews do several shows from the VA hospitals, talking to new Iraqi War vets. He's one of the few, say what you will about him otherwise, who has shown the paraplegic's, the disfigured...and seems genuinely distressed about it.
I would like to see someone do an expose of OLD veterans though. People that everyone else--sometimes including their families--have forgotten about. We went thru a really bad experience with my dad several months ago, where the VA decided to switch the blood pressure meds he'd been using successfully for several years to something cheaper and "almost as good". He had a stroke 2 weeks later. Just came home after 7 months in hospital and nursing home because they "can't do anything more for him". His right arm is totally paralyzed, shuffles along with a cane. This is a guy that was hale and hearty for his 84th birthday right before this happened.
Oh but let's keep making those cuts to VA, Medicare, and Medicaid (which he's dependent on now).
He's a WWII vet, and I know there's thousands more like him: serve their country with honor, and get treated like shit in return. This is what our returning Iraqi vets have in store.

[Corgigal]

20. can't have the VA running to smoothly

and patients getting top quality care. Next thing you know Americans will want socialized medicine and we just can't have that.

[Patiod]

21. My uncle/godfather got excellent care in a NJ VA hospital

in Oradell, NJ. My dad had him moved from a nursing home which would have bankrupted my aunt to the VA hospital, which had good staff and good care.

From what I've heard and read, care varies widely by hospital.

I'd be sick to hear they start contracting out jobs to non-union non-benefit employees.

[struggle4progress]

22. kick

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

24. The entire staff was fantastic when I had my knee replacement

at the Dallas VA hospital. And my Remicade infusion nurse (Nurse Penny) is on the top 100 nurses in the nation list-- she works herself to the bone and then some. Everyone who deals with her loves her. And the doctors and nurses in the various clinics I go to are all excellent.

I've been going there for four years, and haven't had a single cause to complain.