05.15.07

Ongoing Medical Indifference to Veterans

Posted in General at 4:34 pm by MamaSaid

 

My husband, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, was recently sent to the emergency room on his way to the VA hospital. After stopping at a local clinic on his way to the VA because he was dizzy, the clinic called me and let me know they were transporting him by ambulance to the local hospital emergency room because they were not equipped to perform all the necessary tests. The VA hospital in our community is over 50 miles from our residence and located in a town with houses that are impossible for disabled veterans to even dream of affording. Thus, the clinic stated my husband had to be sent to the local emergency room, despite the fact my husband and I let them know he was best sent to a VA hospital because of his special circumstances and medical history.

I offered to drive my husband to the VA but was told not to bother because the ambulance had already arrived. Concerned about my husband’s condition and torn by the fact my children were on their way to catch the school bus and come home at this point, I decided the best way to spend that transitional hour was to contact our family for help and let the VA and the emergency room know about my husband’s situation.

After calling the VA hospital several times and being transferred to numbers that rang without a response, answering machines with no people to talk to and once getting hung up on after lingering in telephone orbit, I called for a fourth time to demand to speak to a doctor on my husband’s team. At this point it was after 4 in the afternoon, my children had just arrived home and no one was around anymore. I persisted that there had to be a doctor on staff because it was a 24 hour hospital and the operator reluctantly transferred me to an intern.

The intern was actually helpful and understanding and even offered me their name, unlike many other employees I have dealt with in the past. However, the intern really had no pertinent information about sharing records with the emergency room or insurance procedures to follow to ensure coverage of the hospital stay but stated he was on call to discuss my husband’s condition with the emergency room. I thanked him and called the toll free number on the back of my husband’s VA card for more information.

The toll free number gave me a list of sensible directions, such as informing the emergency room of their number so that could call for authorization of the visit and conveying to the emergency room the the nature of my husband’s disabilities and condition. The VA employee at this toll free number assured me that the emergency room should be well aware of all these procedures and I should simply verify they had followed them. After an hour and a half, I had finally contacted all the people necessary to make sure my husband received proper care and that we were following the proper procedure to avoid getting a bill we cannot afford.

I then went to the emergency room at the local hospital and attempted to discuss my husband’s situation with the head nurse and the physician on duty. Both were quite abrupt and told me to speak to his attending nurse. I went to the nurse and told her about my husband’s neurological disability, his intolerance for certain medications and that there was a team member available at the VA to discuss these issues with. She balked at the mere thought and curtly told me it would not be necessary. I then let her know that there was a toll free number on the back of my husband’s VA treatment card and inquired if they had called it to ensure coverage for the visit. She told me she didn’t know what to do with that and went back to doing paperwork, ignoring me. I asked if she would call and she said she wasn’t sure if she should and again went back to doing paperwork. I finally asked if there was someone else that calls insurance companies at the hospital that knows about making such calls and if I could speak to that person. The nurse begrudgingly got up and asked the attending physician if she should call about the insurance. He told her to go ahead and call and then reassured me he would be checking on my husband and discussing his condition with me.

After waiting for hours, I saw the attending physician walking toward the exit with a backpack. Although my husband was on an IV and oxygen, he had not returned to check him or discuss his condition with me as promised. I ran after the doctor and he told me he thought he had emphysema and another doctor would be on duty to check him out shortly.

I returned to my husband, who looked clearly distressed. He was very excited and the nurse came over and said it was best to give him something to calm down and an antibiotic. I watched her administer three pills to him and asked her what they were. She told me an antibiotic and something to relax him down because he needed rest. Ten minutes later, the nurse told me the sedatives should be working and my husband should be sleeping in just a few minutes and advised me to leave so he could get sleep. I asked about his condition and if other medications were given to him and she assured me that he was fine and after he got some sleep, the doctor on duty would review everything and contact me.

I asked my husband if I should return home and he told me he needed his rest, his brother would stay with him and he wanted me to get his truck, which was left in a questionable neighborhood near the clinic. I went to get his truck and within ten minutes of arriving home, I got a telephone call from my husband from a telephone booth. He told me he had been released from the hospital because he was deemed to be a problem by security.

As dad went to get my husband from the side of the road, I contacted the hospital to find out what happened and why my disabled husband was wandering the streets full of traffic under the influence of a sedative. I was alarmed when the chief nurse declined that sedatives were administered to my husband, although I watched them do it, and stated it was not on his record. I also found out they gave my husband medications before I arrived that were completely unsuitable for his condition. When I informed the chief nurse that I had told his staff about my husband’s condition and even had a doctor at the VA on call to discuss treatment and suitable medications, he again lied to me by stating I had not done so and that it was not on the record.

My point of telling this tale of woe is the mistreatment veterans are victims of not only in VA hospitals, but at other hospitals as well. It is even more scary to consider the lies and misrepresentations noted on a veteran’s record to cover up the inability of the staff to deal with a specialized situation. If my husband was excited, it was because the medication they gave him was clearly inappropriate to administer because of his neurological problems due to Agent Orange Exposure, which is noted on his VA card. If this is the best treatment our veterans can hope to get, why are we sending more people to war – obviously, our country is not equipped to take proper care of these soldiers when they return. I fear for my husband’s safety and well-being, as well as the health of other veterans all over the country in this system filled with people collecting salaries but making very little effort to accomplish anything meaningful and who are even willing to be dishonest to cover up their inadequacy. I

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2 Comments »

  1. Rebecca said,

    June 6, 2007 at 11:23 pm

    That is totally outrageous! Even though I don’t know you guys that really made me angry, what horrible “care”. Sad to say many people receive sub-standard care at hospitals whether they are veterans or not. Sorry you had to go through that.

  2. AnneW said,

    July 13, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Well, sometimes you receive good care through the services at the VA and sometimes you don’t. My husband recently had a head injury and we called the Fresno VA to let them know we were on our way. Upon arriving we were told that the Fresno VA is not a trauma center and we should have been directed to our closest hospital trauma center due to possible concussion. However, my husband was treated at the VA and all turned out well because he did not have a concussion. The problem is often communication and lack of training, I think.

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