Pentagon Investigates VA Retirement Home - ugly

[donsu]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032200443.html


-snip-

A medical team went for an inspection Wednesday after Defense Secretary Robert Gates got a letter from congressional investigators about allegations of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington.

The letter also cited allegations of an increase in the rates of residents who are sent to hospitals and a case in which a veteran had a bedsore with maggots in the wound.

-snip-

The 87-year-old resident who had the maggots had refused medical treatment, Cox said. He said that was no excuse and that eight employees were fired after an investigation "showed they failed to meet our high standards of care."

-snip-

The Washington retirement home, formerly known as the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, opened in 1851 to wounded and disabled war veterans. It is home to more than 1,100 retirees.

Busloads of veterans escaping hurricane-devastated Mississippi were brought to the home in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina pounded its sister facility in Gulfport.
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every older american's nightmare - being sent off to a nursing home

[Monkeyman]

1. Your dam right its ugly

[Warpy]

2. Underfunding has consequences

and there's little out there that has lest funding to accomplish its mission than the VA. The reason for this is that most veterans can opt out if they have private insurance and most do.

A medical system that was state of the art in the early 60s has been allowed to deteriorate to worse than third world conditions; worse because the third world has better staffing in their primitive hospitals.

The only way we can possibly cure this is to make the VA the medical system for Congress, all of them, no opt outs.

(Oh, and we have a patient's bill of rights. If the patient with the bedsores was mentally competent, he was entitled to refuse treatment.)