Vet dies at VA hospital waiting for an ambulance
ABC News reports that at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque a veteran collapsed in the cafeteria and died while he waited a half-hour for an ambulance to take him the five-hundred yards to the Emergency Room;
Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said.
Staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday, she said. “Our policy is under expedited review,” Brown said.
That policy is a local one, she said.
The man’s name hasn’t been released.
All it would have taken is one hero to whisper “fuck this” under his breath and pushed the dude a few hundred yards. Could they have saved him? I don’t know, but you’d think that someone would have tried instead of hiding behind a policy. If they had tried to get him to the emergency room, we probably wouldn’t have heard this story.
Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College, said the Department of Veterans Affairs is a large bureaucracy with various local policies like the one under review in Albuquerque.
Although the agency needs to undergo reform, Landy said it’s unfair to attack the VA too harshly on the recent Albuquerque death because it appears to be so unusual.
“I think we have to be careful,” he said. “Let’s not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism.”
Yeah, that’s reason to not beat up on them – because they’re pretty well beat up already.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
So basically people watched him die because two people couldn’t physically pick him up?
What a policy over there.
Once again…
..the wonderful competence of Federal Government bureaucrats goes on display for all to see. Did any of them shit in the hallways while he laid there dying?
Another fine example of government-run health care. People think Obamacare will be different. The answer is, it probably will be. There will be a great deal more dependopotamus’s clogging the lines up and backing the doctors up further than even the VA.
The VA is a govt program not a 9 year old girl. Damn right you kick the program while it is down! You keep kicking it till it performs properly!
Carry on!
I could not agree more.
In regard to the howbadmycare program, there is this:
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/obamacare-exchanges-see-problems-with-eligibility-data-watchdog
Might not even get to use it before you die.
Try to find a real good veterinarian. You’d be better off with a horse doctor.
I suppose this can’t be blamed on eric?
“I think we have to be careful,” he said. “Let’s not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism.”
One of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
“Let us not be hasty in judgment” is exactly the same liberal crap I hear on a frequent basis when we uncover violations of election law. The other, which obviously applies in the death of this veteran is, “it was an unintentional minor mistake”. Those are the buzz words for do nothing, sweep it under the rug, turn your head, from a bunch of weak knee pussies, apologies to my cat for that one.
500 yards + 500 yards= 1000 yards roundtrip. Lets see if we assume for AFSCME union (Not my job) members then yes, a patient would expire before someone would have thought about a fucking gurney, load n go. And the union members would be too out of shape to have lifted him the 6-7 inches up onto to said collasped gurney as well. Arg! I forgot about the lifting part!
He was in a cafeteria. Send somebody for the gurney, roll him onto a frickken table and 4 guys take off with him.
He was in a cafeteria at a VA health center. Suppose there was a stretcher around somewhere? Was there a doctor or a nurse around who could keep him going?
Maybe it was more complicated that this …
But the system must be preserved, and the policies enforced. Doesn’t matter if the system and it’s policies are actually killing people. Nope. Of no consequence as long as the admins get their bonuses, and the union rules are strictly honored.
Fire all the at will employees. Immediately. Suspend all union contracts. Immediately. Better yet, fire all the union members.
WTF? Okay. At the VA Hospital I work at we have teams of medical professionals who will respond to any serious medical emergency within the campus buildings. We also require all personnel who work in patient care to be certified in CPR and the use of AED’s.
911 is called for any critical care issues because we do not have the facilities. We actually have contracted ambulances on site 24/7 for just such instances.
I have no fucking idea why it is not a standard VA wide…
Lets cut them a break,,, I mean really how could they predict that a person undergoing treatment at the hospital might have and emergency where they might need to be carried in a gurney to the Emergency Room.
No one else would have thought of that,,,
Having retired from that base, I have seen many occasions where the base medics were forebode to trans port to an off base facility, even to the VA which is attached to the med clinic. A off base ambulance must be called even though there are/is several ambulances at at least 2 of the three fire stations.
In my state if a person has a medical emergency on hospital property -even the parking lot- the Hospital is responsible to respond.
As a civilian Paramedic I say WTF!!!
I can’t believe that the other veterans in that cafeteria didn’t scoop him up and take care of their brother in arms.
I don’t know what they could have done. Most likely they weren’t trained to do any type of response plus they wouldnt know where to get the gurney or where he needed to go.
My guess is that VA security and about a dozen medical staff sealed the guy off and stod around with their thumb up their ass waiting for someone higher up to make a call.
They could’ve made an attempt to get this man to someone who could do something. Doing nothing sure worked out well.
I guarantee you the response staff that showed up told somebody that wanted to do it no and told them to go away.
I guaran-fucking-tee you that.
Given the problems with the VA Hospitals, it is easy to place the blame at the feet of this hospital.
I think in this case that blame is misplaced.
The real question is “where in the heck was the City of Albuquerque Fire / Rescue / EMS?”
Where are THEY for 30 friggin’ minutes in a medical emergency?
If they could not make it to the VA hospital, why wasn’t the hospital informed so the man could then be moved to the other hospital? Why wasn’t the VA informed of the ETA of the ambulance?
It is easy to say the VA should have moved the man to the other hospital, but that is said with hindsight.
Who amongst us would put a man on a gurney for a 5 – 10 minute trip down the road when an ambulance is 30 seconds away?
Not me and I doubt many of you would either because if you start moving the man and he dies as you are 100 yards out the door when the ambulance pulls up, you are going to get your butt sued forever.
While I understand the question of “what was the VA doing?” to me the bigger and more important question that should be answered first is “what in the heck was the City of Albuquerque Fire / Rescue / EMS doing?”
Gitar,
The main point, unless I totally misread it was the man was already at the VA Hospital, 500 yards from the emergency room. The entire concept that they had no effective policy to address getting a person from one part of the hospital to another part 500 yards away without having to call an outside paramedic transport is mindboggling.
You must be fucking retarded then.
After 10 minutes somebody should have realized that shit was absurd and should have done something. It’s called initiative. Apparently it’s even less common than common sense.
I bet those mouth breather professional that get paid well over there are the same type that stands next to other people waiting to get into a room thinking the door is locked when it’s not. Instead nobody actually tried to open the door that was unlocked.
After 10 minutes, the ambulance had not yet arrived. So where is the absurdity?
And frankly, a ten minute response time is not that bad if that time includes the call time.
Hindsight is always 20-20.
It would have been faster to call a Code Blue and have an in-house team dispatched to the cafeteria than wait for EMS
10 minutes inside a fucking hospital is absurd.
Quit making excuses for these scumballs.
I’m sure if it was one of your pals or family members you’d give two shits then.
No one is making excuses for anyone.
No one is saying that we don’t care.
What is being asked is if we know the whole story and all of the contributing factors.
If you don’t like the idea of knowing the facts before making a judgment, don’t blame others.
The AFD arrived less than 10 min after being dispatched.
Once on the scene, life support care will be provided. A Paramedic crew can do everything the Emergency Department can do for the first 20 min of an arrest. Moving a patient interrupts the immediate care that can be highly effective in getting a person back in the first 10 min of care.
Trying to blame the AFD for putting ambulances at points away from the hospitals to shorten response times to a persons home (maybe because the thinking is putting an ambulance at a hospital means the 8 min response to a home 18 min from the hospital can only happen if the ambulance is 10 min away from the hospital…) Is trying to blame responders.
It looks like the Vietnam Vet who died had Paramedics at his side in under 10 min (about 5 min later than had a VA “Code Blue” team could have moved him to the Emergency Department 500 yards away). At that point it is likely he was with out a heart beat for 10 to 12 min and was totally dependent on CPR with out an AED or supportive O2/BVM.
Once the Paramedics arrived, they put him on a monitor (to shock if advised) started an IV or IO (drilling into the bone to give drugs that way) provided fluid to help keep up the blood pressure, cardiac drugs to help the heart start beating on its own, Oxygen, suction, intubated (put a breathing tube in), continued CPR manually or with a machine, and analyzed the heart rhythm regularly, after about 8 to 10 min of care, then they would move the patient. So he was getting quality care about 10 min after they were called.
The real question is why didn’t the VA have a system to get rapid response for health issues on the VA property? Why did they have a plan that relies on a system design to reduce the time care can reach people further way from the hospital to care for needs at the site?
http://www.abqjournal.com/424630/news/424630.html
Top W. Kone,
The article you cite says the ambulance arrived 11 minutes, (not less than 10) after being dispatched.
The reason that and the original article caught my eye was that we had a city here in Florida who response time was acceptable when the units were being dispatched, but the actual dispatching took forever – in some cases 20 minutes.
I am not saying that the VA is totally innocent in this case. Far from it. What I am saying is that there are more contributing factors that need to be looked at before heaping the blame totally on the VA.
My question still is: why call an ambulance at all? The medical emergency was handled in house, in the VA ER in the same building with the cafeteria in which this vet collapsed. What their “policy” dictated was that an ambulance be called from a civilian agency to transport the vet across the parking lot. Or down the hall, which was likely an even shorter route.
Doesn’t matter if it was 8 minutes or 38 minutes, why was ER (which was available down the hall) attention purposefully delayed by whatever time it takes for a civilian ambulance response?
Bureaucrats protecting their imagined turf is the only explanation I can see – an that is hardly an acceptable excuse for killing yet another vet.
This is utter Bullshit! Even if it was impossible for the patient to be moved to the ER, there is NO reason the Code Blue team couldn’t have gone to HIM. This is a massive EMTALA violation and I hope someone swings for it.
“Article 99”. that is the name of the movie made in 1991 released in 1992. It tells you all about the struggle getting care at the V. A. way back when. This is indeed not a new problem but one that is horrific and a problem that needs to come to an end. Find the Movie watch it and see how it was back then….by the way that was way back when G.H.W. bush was the President.