Posted on 05/15/2015 1:25:11 PM PDT by lowbridge
The Seattle Veterans Affairs hospital is apologizing for leaving an Army veteran stranded outside its emergency room with a broken foot.
Donald Siefken, 64, told The Seattle Times that hospital staff refused to help him move 10 feet through the emergency room doors. Siefken was told to call 911 for help instead.
Siefken told the Times he fell while getting ready to drive his wife to Sea-Tac Airport in February. He said his foot started to swell and hurt during the drive. After dropping off his wife, Siefken drove to the VA hospital in Seattle. He said he was in too much pain to walk into the ER himself. The hospital told Siefken to call 911 and then a staffer hung up on him, according to accounts from the emergency call.
"It's hurting like the devil and they won't come out and get me. Can you believe that?" Siefken told the 911 dispatcher. "[Hospital staff] told me to call 911 and hung up on me."
The VA originally stood by its actions, according to the Times. The VA told the paper its policy is to have people call 911 if they can't make it from the parking lot to the ER. A VA spokesperson later admitted the hospital did not do the right thing.
(Excerpt) Read more at king5.com ...
Somebody needs to be hung by the cojones with a rusty wire.
Fire the VA Managers. All of them!!!
Reprehensible.
Who are these people. Are they human?
Same sort of customer service in Phoenix ... even now
Good enough for government work!
How much do you want to bet that that “staffer” never served a day in uniform?
“Somebody needs to be hung by the cojones with a rusty wire.”
Or as another Freeper said in another post this a.m., there needs to be “scrotal torsion” applied to the person refusing aid at the VA.
That is sick.
Bonus time!
That manager is up for a BONUS.
As a veteran, I’m rather glad that it never even occured to me to try and utilize the VA for anything at all when I got out.
Walk into to any VA Facility and within 1/10 of a second you will understand what the problem is and why it will never be fixed.
Also FTA....
“When the Veteran told our emergency room staff that he did not have an urgent or emergent medical issue, our staff should have considered the request for help as a patient assistance issue. The emergency room personnel should have called the appropriate staff to come and assist the patient, ensuring he made it into the emergency room safely.
___________________________________________
Since when does the ER staff have time to run outside for what they thought was a non-emergency.
I’m not siding with the ER staff, but they are not quite the bastids these replies are making them out to be.
See post 14.
At our VA there is always a bunch of vols hanging around...someone could have helped this guy.
At our VA there is always a bunch of vols hanging around...someone could have helped this guy.
then sell their entire families to the mussies!
He maybe could have driven closer?
As in, right in front of the door, blocking it until they got him.
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