Oklahoma VA facility patient died, maggots found in his wound...

[Ackmed]

I have personally found the VA care pretty good. It is annoying if I need to go to the actual hospital and not just an out patient facility that the closest one is over 2 hours away. They seem very backed up because appointments can take forever. I don't have my own civilian personal physician like I probably should, but I never get sick and just never go. I have free care for life from the VA but even there I don't have an appointed physician. The Dr's and staff have all been pretty good each time I have gone. Only go when I have to, always depressing and I don't like talking to people necessarily. I have heard horror stories from other friends who have gone.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

So . . . Government health care, wonderful as long as you don't mind dying?

Dude you know nothing of his circumstance.
He had 4 battles with cancer, 3 of which required major surgery and/or chemo, he had lung damage and a non healing wound.
How would you do after those battles, how would your bank account look, how many creditors would put claim to your estate if you didn't make it?
I'm just saying from what I observed the VA system took good care of him. That's not saying its a perfect system.

 

[OverVolt]

Many doctors treat patients with cookie cutter medicine where every patient gets the same treatment. Many doctors have no clue even how to treat people with type 2 diabetes. Treating infectious wounds is very complicated.

But ya'll voted for it mang. Now go tell your doctor to go plug in the right ICD-10 code into the obamacare EHR already.

Ever notice that your doctor hardly ever spends any time looking at you and now spends half his time "examining" you looking at a computer? Yep.

 

[Kazukian]

But ya'll voted for it mang. Now go tell your doctor to go plug in the right ICD-10 code into the obamacare EHR already.

Ever notice that your doctor hardly ever spends any time looking at you and now spends half his time "examining" you looking at a computer? Yep.

That's because the lawyers, insurance companies, and government regs have reduced us to numbers, lab results, number of patients seen, minutes/visit, wait times, medications, screenings, it's insane, there's no way to keep track of it without computers, and administration implements horrible software for us to use. It'll be a decade before the software is anywhere near useable and you can just forget about sharing data between facilities, we print it, and fax it, then scan in the faxes.

The Feds keep kicking the can down the road about the interoperability issues.

Honestly, most primary care docs should just be replaced (hell no one wants to do primary care anymore anyway, so it'd just be implementing algorhythyms for other staff to follow)

As far as diabetes, it's a disease that people need to be trained and educated about, and work with their doc on, but we want to just take a pill and nothing else.

 

[Sunburn74]

Just for reference, people showing up in hospitals with maggots in their wounds is not an uncommon occurrence.

But ya'll voted for it mang. Now go tell your doctor to go plug in the right ICD-10 code into the obamacare EHR already.

Ever notice that your doctor hardly ever spends any time looking at you and now spends half his time "examining" you looking at a computer? Yep.

Actually no. Most of the time is spent running around seeing other patients or doing procedures. In a 12 hour work day, docs spend probably about 2-4 hours charting (ie looking at a computer). The remainder is doing doctor stuff. The difference is in the 1950s docs saw maybe 1-3 not so sick patients during 12 hours and wrote terrible paper notes and now its more like 20 fairly sick patients with half decent notes.
.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Dude you know nothing of his circumstance.
He had 4 battles with cancer, 3 of which required major surgery and/or chemo, he had lung damage and a non healing wound.
How would you do after those battles, how would your bank account look, how many creditors would put claim to your estate if you didn't make it?
I'm just saying from what I observed the VA system took good care of him. That's not saying its a perfect system.

They didn't change his bandages for 21 days. That's not taking good care of somebody.

 

[Kazukian]

They didn't change his bandages for 21 days. That's not taking good care of somebody.

I think you-all are talking about 2 different patients, FM's relative & the guy in OK.

The VA (fed) typically has good specialty clinics, once you're plugged in & work with them.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

They didn't change his bandages for 21 days. That's not taking good care of somebody.

Was my post #9 that hard to understand? Did I word it poorly?

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ots-found-in-his-wound.2493632/#post-38613193

 

[UglyCasanova]

Was my post #9 that hard to understand? Did I word it poorly?

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ots-found-in-his-wound.2493632/#post-38613193

My mistake, I thought you were referring to the patient in the OP. No need to act like a jackass in your response though.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

My mistake, I thought you were referring to the patient in the OP. No need to act like a jackass in your response though.

Apologies, I was feeling bitchy then

 

[Puffnstuff]

That's what I don't get, makes no sense at all. Give them insurance and utilize the same healthcare systems the rest of us do,

That is what Veteran Choice is all about if you can get your local VA facility to do the paperwork correctly and submit it in a timely manner to get approval, wait for several weeks for them to decide to approve it and then find enough time to actually contact you about it. Then wait several more weeks for them to decide to schedule you an appointment with an outside provide and then you end up like me waiting 5 months to be seen by an ortho doctor for my knees and even then they couldn't get the paperwork right so I had to go through the process again to get them to approve both knees like they should've done in the first place.

In the end I had to wait almost 6 months to get joint treatment (steroids and gel injections) when it should've been done back in July. The VA medical system needs to issue a card that is good at any medical facility just like regular insurance and allow you to get what you need when you need it.