Historical US Marine Hospital Sits Empty While Veterans Wait for Care?

Louisville's U.S. Marine Hospital remains empty, decade after exterior restored 
WDRB News
By Sarah Phinney
Posted: Mar 29, 2015

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It has been 10 years since the exterior of Louisville's U.S. Marine Hospital in the Portland neighborhood was restored, but the inside remains unfinished.

Several rooms on the first floor are used for meetings and group exercise, but the rest of the old hospital is closed to the public due to safety concerns. Because the outside is restored, Family Health Centers Executive Director Bill Wagner says many people believe the inside is in good shape, too. 

"Little do they know, it's empty," said Wagner. The hospital, designed by Washington Monument architect Robert Mills, opened on April 1, 1852.

Union soldiers were treated at the hospital during the first two years of the Civil War and later World War I veterans. But, most of the patients throughout the years were merchant sailors.

"They may have been injured during their jobs or they may have contracted contagious diseases," Wagner said.

The building later served as living quarters for nurses and doctors in the 1930s, before the City of Louisville purchased it for $25,000 in 1950. It was later turned into office space and is currently owned by the Board of Health, while Family Health Centers oversees it.

Though patients haven't been in the hospital for decades, some of the original features are still intact. read more here

Thanks to congress wounded do without at military hospitals

House GOP voted to repeal Obamacare for 40th time this week. Now they are threatening to shut down the government if they do not get their own way. Didn't matter to them the people of this country voted for what the majority wanted since the majority of the whole nation votes for President and districts vote for their Senators and Representatives in the House. While they are wasting time on ending health insurance reform they are avoiding doing the right thing for the sake of the wounded they created by sending troops into Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing matters to these people anymore if it does not hit them where they live.

Case in point is when the air traffic controllers and the TSA were holding up flights they had to take. It was a matter of a couple of days before they ended that trouble. When it comes to the troops wounded in our name, they stick two fingers in their ears and hold the middle on straight up in the air.

Military hospitals shrinking services to meet spending cuts
USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
August 3, 2013

Because of staff furloughs, patients are asked to practice more patience in getting health care needs met.

Patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and other premier military hospitals are being sent to private doctors and having surgery and other treatment delayed because of furloughs to medical personnel, according to interviews and internal documents.

"Please show (patients) the utmost understanding and care while we are asking them to accept longer wait times and in some cases, curtailed or limited services," Rear Adm. Alton Stocks, hospital commander, told staff in a July 12 message.

A "colleagues" memo issued in recent days says inpatient beds are in "critically short supply" because of furloughs of civilian staff triggered by federal spending cuts known as sequestration.

The memo encourages "dispositions/discharges as soon as possible." Hospital spokesperson Sandy Dean explained this direction, saying, "We are are encouraging health care providers to be more efficient when handling their paperwork instead of writing discharge orders later in the day ... no patient has been or will be discharged before it is medically appropriate."

With cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems at an all-time high, Dean says civilian caregivers in the hospital's in-patient mental health section are furloughed, reducing beds there from 28 to 22.
read more here

PS or BS, Congress gets tax payer funded health insurance!

Speaker of the House silent on cuts at Military Hospitals

Speaker of the House silent on cuts at Military Hospitals
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
June 1, 2013

When John Boehner said "I got 98 percent of what I wanted." with sequestration no one asked him how he dared be so happy when it meant so much harm to the American people. Congress hadn't managed to pass a budge that had a chance of passing for the simple reason it helped the wealthy but harmed the rest of the American people. We're used to it. We're used to people like him always shooting his mouth off about what he thinks the people want when he doesn't seem to care about what we need.

As most of us were reading how Meals on Wheels would no longer be able to deliver hot meals to thousands of elderly people and the disabled, he was whining about the Air Traffic Controllers and how cutting their hours made it hard on members of congress to have to wait in line with the rest of us. They acted fast to fix that problem.

Bridges and roads fall apart but instead of putting thousands to work fixing them, he approved of so many public workers losing their jobs.

Cops and firefighters lost jobs after most of these jobs are done by veterans coming home from combat and still wanting to serve their communities.

When he pushed and pushed to blame someone over what happened in Benghazi, he didn't seem too interested that Congress cut the budget for security. Boehner doesn't seem too interested in the outcome of the 98% of what he wanted would do unless it directly affected members of Congress.

We've heard speech after speech and hearing after hearing on the backlog of claims at the VA but what we didn't hear was that there has been a history of congressional ambivalence to what disabled veterans face when they come home. The VA claims were higher during other administrations simply because Congress never really got their act together on making sure veterans didn't have to wait in long lines to be treated and compensated for what their service did to them. Reporters failed to inform the American people that when troops were sent to fight in two wars there were less people working on taking care of them than after the Gulf War. That is how we ended up in the mess in 2009 when the backlogs hit 915,000.

Now it seems we have the ultimate betrayal. Workers at Military Hospitals are being cut. Yes, that is the truth but it is doubtful Boehner will do a damn thing about it.

Walter Reed hospital workers receive furlough notices
May 30, 2013

ABC7 has confirmed the region’s two military hospitals are furloughing more than 3,500 civilian employees who care for the nation’s wounded warriors, nearly their entire civilian staffs.

The impacted employees are from departments across the board at both hospitals, including members of the trauma team, physical therapists and nurses. They will be forced to take 11 unpaid furlough days starting in July.

Hospital officials say the furloughs affect 2,392 caregivers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. That’s 94% of the civilian staff there.

Officials say 1,163 caregivers at Fort Belvoir’s hospital in Virginia are being furloughed, affecting 85% of its civilian staff.
read more here

Troop hospitalizations show mental toll of war

Troop hospitalizations show mental toll of war
By WYATT OLSON
Stars and Stripes
Published: July 1, 2012

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Hospitalizations of troops with mental disorders such as suicidal or homicidal intent and debilitating psychosis reached a 10-year high in 2011, underscoring the mental and emotional toll of America’s dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center says 13,133 servicemembers were treated as inpatients last year for mental disorders, the top reason for hospitalization of active-duty troops. That was up from 10,706 in 2007.

The total number of hospitalizations for mental disorders in 2011 was about 21,700, suggesting that many patients were treated more than once, based on annual data from a recently released Medical Surveillance Monthly Report.

The number of visits for outpatient mental health treatment has also ballooned, almost doubling from just under 1 million in 2007 to about 1.89 million in 2011, the report revealed.

The number of hospitalizations is almost certainly higher because it does not include inpatient treatment of mental disorders during deployments or field training exercises, or on ships at sea.
read more here

A military hospital's all-encompassing mission

A military hospital's all-encompassing mission

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 26, 2010
AT KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN Most of the time, this war-theater hospital crackles with danger and expertise, its staff members working to keep alive people who would be dead if they ended up almost anywhere else in the world.

But some of the time, often in the morning, it's quiet and almost empty, except for a few recuperating Afghans stoically watched over by family members and, today, a young girl in a pink robe exploring the corridor outside her room in a wheelchair.

The hospital, which opened in May and is owned by NATO, is an odd mix of urgency and relaxation. It features patients whose stays inside its $40 million walls are both shorter and longer than any in contemporary U.S. hospitals.

American soldiers critically injured on the battlefield spend only a day or two here, many unconscious and on ventilators, before being sent to Bagram air base, then to a hospital in Germany and on to the United States.

At the other end of the continuum are the Afghans who make up about half the patients.
read more here
A military hospital all encompassing mission

Ex-soldier in need of help takes 3 hospital workers hostage

Ex-soldier takes 3 hospital workers hostage

By Russ Bynum - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Sep 7, 2010 12:03:53 EDT

SAVANNAH, Ga. — A former Army soldier seeking help for mental problems at a Georgia military hospital took three workers hostage at gunpoint Monday before authorities persuaded him to surrender.

No one was hurt and no shots were fired in the short standoff at Winn Army Community Hospital on Fort Stewart, about 40 miles southwest of Savannah, said fort spokesman Kevin Larson. Military officials said the hostages were able to calm the gunman and keep him away from patients until he surrendered.

Military police arrested the gunman, who was being questioned Monday afternoon. His name was not immediately released.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Phillips, a senior Fort Stewart commander, said the former soldier was seeking help for mental problems that were "connected, I'm quite certain, to his past service."

"He hadn't gotten the care that he wanted and he wanted it now," Phillips said, based on what one of the hostages had told him. "He'd had some experiences that could lead one to believe there were aftereffects to his service."
go here for more
Ex soldier takes 3 hospital workers hostage

Donations allow wounded vets to take a golf swing

Donations allow wounded vets to take a golf swing

By DANIELA FLORES
Associated Press Writer


TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Brian Coleman was never in the service and has no ties to the military. But when he began looking for a cause to support after his retirement, he decided helping wounded veterans was the way to go.

Now the 62-year-old, who splits his time between Madison and Bradenton, Fla., spends anywhere from 35 to 70 hours a week running Golf Supports Our Troops, a nonprofit that raises money to donate golf equipment to military hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.

"My intent was not to teach these guys to be golf pros," Coleman said. "It was to have some fun, maybe get golf into their recovery, but it was the health benefits of the equipment that I thought would be interesting."

Coleman retired from the graphic arts/printing field eight years ago, but after two years of boredom, decided to start a small golf company. Then, a year and a half ago, he decided he'd had enough. Left with a huge inventory, he thought he could do something good with it and Golf Supports Our Troops was born.
click post title for more

Feres Doctrine is Doctrine of Death

Active military barred from malpractice suits
1950 ruling protects service hospitals, regardless of error
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
April 20, 2008


Minutes after routine surgery for acute appendicitis in October 2003, Staff Sgt. Dean Witt, 25, was being moved to a recovery room at a Northern California military hospital when he gasped and stopped breathing.

A student nurse assisting an understaffed anesthesia team tried to resuscitate Witt and failed. Inexplicably, Witt's gurney was wheeled into a pediatric area. Lifesaving devices sized for children, not a 175-pound adult, proved useless, according to an internal report on the incident.

Medical personnel at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base screamed at each other. A double dose of a powerful stimulant was mistakenly administered. When a breathing tube was inserted, it was misdirected, uselessly pumping air into Witt's stomach. Errors compounded errors, and delays multiplied.



By the time a breathing tube was finally inserted correctly, Witt had suffered devastating brain damage. Three months later, he was removed from life support and died. Witt left behind a wife and two young children.

"This medical incident was due to an avoidable error," concluded a previously unpublished internal report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

Despite the report's harsh criticism of Witt's medical care, the bereaved family could not sue for malpractice because Witt was an active-duty airman. Under limits stemming from an obscure Supreme Court ruling nearly 60 years old, military hospitals and their staffs are immune from malpractice claims if the victim is an enlisted man or woman on active duty.

A series of court rulings since 1950 have upheld the original decision, known as Feres v. United States, which denies members of the military the right to sue for damages over medical errors or even deliberate wrongs.

Feres defenders say the doctrine is necessary to protect the military from costly, time-consuming trials that could compromise military discipline. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former fighter pilot, called Feres "a reasonable approach to ensuring that litigation does not interfere with the objectives and readiness of our nation's military."

click post title for more