The VA Hospital System.....like universal healthcare?

jackson145 · Dec 27, 2007

Which VA hospital does your family use? My grandfather goes to the VA in Indianapolis and we aren't satisfied with his care at all. He had a skin cancer that they insisted on waiting and watching until it was so big that our local Doc couldn't get it all. They also let his glaucoma ruin his eye before finally doing surgery.

Future-nurse · Dec 27, 2007

How much do the VA nurses make? I cant find anything on google or any of the salary.com sites

Ive always wanted to help veterans but I also need to be able to support my parents.

Athenas83 · Dec 27, 2007

Which VA hospital does your family use? My grandfather goes to the VA in Indianapolis and we aren't satisfied with his care at all. He had a skin cancer that they insisted on waiting and watching until it was so big that our local Doc couldn't get it all. They also let his glaucoma ruin his eye before finally doing surgery.

Oh man, that's so sad about your grandpa Jackson. My family uses the only VA in Charleston, SC.

Crocuta, RN · Dec 27, 2007

My parents and grandparents are vets, and they get good healthcare that isn't expensive. Is that what universal healthcare would be like?

You are talking about the same good folks that were running Walter Reed, right?

Bopeepinwv · Dec 27, 2007

Please do not compare all VA Hospitals with Walter Reed. I work at a VA hospital and I promise you that we take the best possible care of our patients. We may be short staffed at times, but we make sure all patients are clean, medicated and shown the upmost respect.

husker_rn, RN · Dec 27, 2007

VA care varies state to state; just got back from out of state where my husband had surgery and RFA for colon ca and met to the liver; the state we live in did tests, pre-op etc. then sat on their hands for 3 months. The neighboring state gave GREAT care. Too bad all vets don't get equal care; don't think it's the medical personal but rather those handling the purse strings......sounds a bit familiar huh???

pickledpepperRN · Dec 27, 2007

I worked at the VA during the Viet Nam war but most of my patients were WWII vets.

My uncle received the best of expert care and kindness at the vA in Oklahoma City. They saved his live several times. He had an excellent quality of life until a couple days before he died in his late 80's.

He enjoyed his nurses. He appreciated that they knew him as a person.

x_coastie · Dec 27, 2007

The biggest difference between VA and "universal" health care is the patients. The VA deals with people that volunteered to give their life for the country. Universal health care will have to deal with people that expect the system to bend over backward for them for "free". Saying that the VA is good statistically, so universal health care will be good statistically is not a valuable comparison.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Dec 28, 2007

you are talking about the same good folks that were running walter reed, right?

walter reed is an army hospital not a va hospital. the va has been smeared by lazy reporting.

from american prospect:

[the] vha's complete adoption of electronic health records and performance measures have resulted in high-quality, low-cost health care with high patient satisfaction. a recent rand study found that vha outperforms all other sectors of american health care across the spectrum of 294 measures of quality in disease prevention and treatment. for six straight years, vha has led private-sector health care in the independent american customer satisfaction index.

indeed, the vha's lead in care quality isn't disputed. a new england journal of medicine study from 2003 compared the vha with fee-for-service medicare on 11 measures of quality. the vha came out "significantly better" on every single one. the annals of internal medicine pitted the vha against an array of managed-care systems to see which offered the best treatment for diabetics. the vha triumphed in all seven of the tested metrics. the national committee for quality assurance, meanwhile, ranks health plans on 17 different care metrics, from hypertension treatment to adherence to evidence-based treatments. as phillip longman, the author of best care anywhere, a book chronicling the vha's remarkable transformation, explains: "winning ncqa's seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. and who do you suppose is the highest ranking health care system? johns hopkins? mayo clinic? massachusetts general? nope. in every single category, the veterans health care system outperforms the highest-rated non-vha hospitals."

what makes this such an explosive story is that the vha is a truly socialized medical system. the unquestioned leader in american health care is a government agency that employs 198,000 federal workers from five different unions, and nonetheless maintains short wait times and high consumer satisfaction. eighty-three percent of vha hospital patients say they are satisfied with their care, 69 percent report being seen within 20 minutes of scheduled appointments, and 93 percent see a specialist within 30 days.

critics will say that the vha is not significantly cheaper than other american health care, but that's misleading. in fact, the vha is also proving far better than the private sector at controlling costs. as longman explains, "veterans enrolled in [the vha] are, as a group, older, sicker, poorer, and more prone to mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse than the population as a whole. half of all vha enrollees are over age 65. more than a third smoke. one in five veterans has diabetes, compared with one in 14 u.s. residents in general." yet the vha's spending per patient in 2004 was $540 less than the national average, and the average american is healthier and younger (the nation includes children; the vha doesn't).

source: http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_health_of_nations accessed 12/28/07.

i plan to take a position with the va in june. as a veteran i firmly believe that the va should provide the best care in the us. the va can certainly act as a model for improving the rest of the health care system.

for mpls i was told starting pay is 56,000 at fte.

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Dec 28, 2007

Regarding VA hospitals - when my father was alive he had to drive more than an hour to a VA hospital/Doctor. He could see an MD in his hometown and it would be covered by Medicare. Since Medicare and VA are paid out of the same govt. funds I could never understand why he could not just see the MD in town and VA pay. Makes no sense to me. I think it is redundant and expensive. I will say that the care he got was appropriate at the VA, just a bother to drive so far and wait to be seen.

anonymurse · Dec 28, 2007

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