VA Hospitals Have 3,000 Vacancies They Can’t Fill

[longknife]

Nobody wants the inflexible hours, poor pay, and government red tape.

The article has a 15 page list of every hospital and what they are short. It doesn’t include specifics just whether they are clinical or other.

Mental health providers topped the list for the most-needed occupation. Of the 140 hospitals, 98 reported a shortage of psychiatrists and 58 hospitals needed more psychologists. Other in-demand jobs included primary care doctors, human resources staff and police.

More @ VA hospitals across the country have more than 3,000 unwanted jobs

 

[Mr Natural]

The VA should not be running hospitals.

Veterans (and their immediate families) should be able to go to any hospital they want with the bills being sent to the VA for payment.

 

[longknife]

The VA should not be running hospitals.

Veterans (and their immediate families) should be able to go to any hospital they want with the bills being sent to the VA for payment.

Having recently been taken [against my will] to a civilian hospital, I can swear that the cost of a VA medical facility is a hundred times cheaper!

 

[Daryl Hunt]

The VA should not be running hospitals.

Veterans (and their immediate families) should be able to go to any hospital they want with the bills being sent to the VA for payment.

Having recently been taken [against my will] to a civilian hospital, I can swear that the cost of a VA medical facility is a hundred times cheaper!

I have talked with VA Doctors. Here is the way it goes.

A VA Doctor gets 129,000 a year, works some pretty long hours but not out of the norm for a doctor and cannot accept outside jobs. Meanwhile, his civilian hospital doctor counterpart receives 150K a year and can accept outside jobs. The Civilian Doctor ends up making over 500K a year easy with about the same effort. The problem isn't with the VA, it's with the over payment of the civilian medical community.

I did one treatment with the Civilian Hospital when i was trying to break away from the VA. After one visit to the Emergency room at a local Hospital where nothing was resolved, here came the bill. I am covered by Medicare and Tricare. Medicare covered 80% of the Bill, Tricare was supposed to cover the rest or no more than 80% of the original bill. This should have been covered with a bunch left over. I still got a bill for a little over 8 bucks. That means the Hospital sucked up 160% and did exactly nothing. The next time the condition came up, I went to the VA Emergency Room in really bad shape. They examined me and asked my why I haven't been treated. I stated, " I got tired of being sent home to die by the VA". Talk about a wake up call. They smelled a huge bad PR problem and fell all over themselves. This was right after the really bad press the VA had received. I got the help I needed, they stopped treating me like a small child and things got done. I live a whole lot better now and have very little but effective medication.

Our Civilian Medical System is extremely broken and if you are on the bottom of the income level, you really are sent home to die. You can't afford health care nor can you afford health insurance. So the only health care available is the Emergency Room and then you have to find a way to either ignore or pay off the exorbitant health bill. The bill will be picked up by everyone else that can afford to pay either by cash, credit or health insurance. Or you can go home and wait to die. Recently, I see all these advertisements for Health Insurance but the disclaimers all say that they don't meet the minimum require requirements for health insurance. The Health Care Industry is broken today more than any time. After seeing how poorly the Civilian Health care system works, I am a big supporter of converting the Civilian Health Care to the system the VA has, not the other way around.

The VA is fine. It's the Civilian Health Care that is badly broken.

 

[longknife]

The VA should not be running hospitals.

Veterans (and their immediate families) should be able to go to any hospital they want with the bills being sent to the VA for payment.

Having recently been taken [against my will] to a civilian hospital, I can swear that the cost of a VA medical facility is a hundred times cheaper!

I have talked with VA Doctors. Here is the way it goes.

A VA Doctor gets 129,000 a year, works some pretty long hours but not out of the norm for a doctor and cannot accept outside jobs. Meanwhile, his civilian hospital doctor counterpart receives 150K a year and can accept outside jobs. The Civilian Doctor ends up making over 500K a year easy with about the same effort. The problem isn't with the VA, it's with the over payment of the civilian medical community.

I did one treatment with the Civilian Hospital when i was trying to break away from the VA. After one visit to the Emergency room at a local Hospital where nothing was resolved, here came the bill. I am covered by Medicare and Tricare. Medicare covered 80% of the Bill, Tricare was supposed to cover the rest or no more than 80% of the original bill. This should have been covered with a bunch left over. I still got a bill for a little over 8 bucks. That means the Hospital sucked up 160% and did exactly nothing. The next time the condition came up, I went to the VA Emergency Room in really bad shape. They examined me and asked my why I haven't been treated. I stated, " I got tired of being sent home to die by the VA". Talk about a wake up call. They smelled a huge bad PR problem and fell all over themselves. This was right after the really bad press the VA had received. I got the help I needed, they stopped treating me like a small child and things got done. I live a whole lot better now and have very little but effective medication.

Our Civilian Medical System is extremely broken and if you are on the bottom of the income level, you really are sent home to die. You can't afford health care nor can you afford health insurance. So the only health care available is the Emergency Room and then you have to find a way to either ignore or pay off the exorbitant health bill. The bill will be picked up by everyone else that can afford to pay either by cash, credit or health insurance. Or you can go home and wait to die. Recently, I see all these advertisements for Health Insurance but the disclaimers all say that they don't meet the minimum require requirements for health insurance. The Health Care Industry is broken today more than any time. After seeing how poorly the Civilian Health care system works, I am a big supporter of converting the Civilian Health Care to the system the VA has, not the other way around.

The VA is fine. It's the Civilian Health Care that is badly broken.

Thanks for your awesome post.

I went in to see my military primary care doctor Tuesday for pain in my left knee and described a symptom I've been encountering. I ended up in the ER for a "heart condition." I was admitted and sent to a ward where the staff did a great job - until the second day. My biggest problem is that I know what and when to take my medicines and that did not match was they had as "doctor's orders." They failed to give me my meds for peripheral nephropathy and sent me for an MRI on my knee. I lay in that damned machine and my legs spammed from the lack of the meds. It was pure hell and the guys got me out of there the first moment they could. My knee is shot and there's little they can do for it but are going to try.

When the doc released me, I got stuck waiting nearly two hours for a new med to be delivered from the pharmacy. In the end, they went down to get it.

All in all, I rate my care at the AF hospital 1,000 times better than I got at the civilian one.

 

[evenflow1969]

Nobody wants the inflexible hours, poor pay, and government red tape.

The article has a 15 page list of every hospital and what they are short. It doesn’t include specifics just whether they are clinical or other.

Mental health providers topped the list for the most-needed occupation. Of the 140 hospitals, 98 reported a shortage of psychiatrists and 58 hospitals needed more psychologists. Other in-demand jobs included primary care doctors, human resources staff and police.

More @ VA hospitals across the country have more than 3,000 unwanted jobs

There are good people willing to work for less in many situations! I would be hesitant to work for an institution that has such a bad name. No one wants to be associated with grift and waste!

 

[whitehall]

Employment vacancies not patient vacancies right?

 

[Sunni Man]

I've been using the VA outpatient clinic and hospital for around 7 years.

The doctors, nurses, and medical staff, have been competent and professional in my interactions with them.

Always receive my prescriptions thru the mail in a timely manner.

I really have no complaints. ....

 

[MacTheKnife]

I've been using the VA outpatient clinic and hospital for around 7 years.

The doctors, nurses, and medical staff, have been competent and professional in my interactions with them.

Always receive my prescriptions thru the mail in a timely manner.

I really have no complaints. ....

I have receieved excellent care from the V.A.

I had major surgery a couple of years ago and was very impressed with the surgeon. She did a great job. The recovery room though was very noisy couldnt get any sleep.

I do have one big complaint about the VA. They do not treat all veterans equally. They break it down into categories. The preferred categories get more coverage. Recently I heard the V.A. was now offering Acupuncture. I have been going to a civilian acupunturist--a chinese lady who treats me for insomnia and tinnitus and who charges 80 dollars for each treatment. So I thought well I must check with the V.A. about getting accupuncture treatments.

I was informed it was only for those suffering intense pain. So the categories always come into play with the V.A.

 

[fncceo]

Nobody wants the inflexible hours, poor pay, and government red tape

Tell me about it ...