An 81-year-old veteran hobbled into the emergency room at the rural Veterans Affairs hospital here in December, malnourished and dehydrated, his skin flecked with ulcers and his ribs broken from a fall at home.<\/p>\n
A doctor examining the veteran \u2014 a 20-year Air Force mechanic named Walter Savage who had been living alone \u2014 decided he was in no shape to care for himself and should be admitted to the hospital. A second doctor running the inpatient ward agreed.<\/p>\n
But the hospital administration said no.<\/p>\n
Though there were plenty of empty beds, records show that a nurse in charge of enforcing administration restrictions said Mr. Savage was not sick enough to qualify for admission to the hospital. He waited nine hours in the emergency room until, finally, he was sent home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctors were mad; the nurses were mad,\u201d said Mr. Savage\u2019s son-in-law, Mark Ridimann. \u201cAnd my dad, he was mad, too. He kept saying, \u2018I\u2019ve laid my life on the line, two years in Vietnam, and this is what I get?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The denial appeared to be part of an attempt by members of the Roseburg Veterans Administration Medical Center to limit the number of patients it admitted to the hospital in an effort to lift its quality-of-care ratings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, the VA decided to move Paxton to Huntington, I guess to hide him away. That’s when the mayor of Charleston, West Virginia, Danny Jones, contacted Senator Joe Manchin who stopped Paxton’s assignment.<\/p>\n
Manchin confirmed Monday on the mayor\u2019s show \u201c580 Live\u201d on MetroNews affiliate 580-WCHS that Paxton will not be transferred to the Huntington facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know where he\u2019s going or if they\u2019re reviewing, but he\u2019s not coming to West Virginia,\u201d Manchin said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I still won’t vote for Manchin in the Fall, but he did good on this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another Pat sends us a link from MetroNews which reports that the Huntington, West Virginia VA … Huntington VA dodges bullet<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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