By RENI WINTER
THE SUN HERALD
I have been waiting for all most a year for an appointment with a dermatology. But since I also have Tri-Care Prime I was able to use Keesler Air Force Base Hospital and I was seen with 2 weeks.
I recommend if you want great medical service get Tri-Care Prime and use Keesler Hospital, you will not regret the change.
BILOXI -Seven days after surgery for an abdominal aneurysm that was about to burst, Army veteran Delbert Kading has nothing but praise for the VA hospital in Biloxi.
"I've been going to VA hospitals all over the country for 20 years, and I rank this one right at the top," Kading said Thursday. "You couldn't go to a civilian hospital anywhere in the country and get better care. The doctors are so compassionate. Dr. Fontanelle always cheers me up whenever he comes by. He's been my friend for 11 years."
I have been going to the VA hospital in Gulfport and Biloxi for 13 years and I rate both of them at the bottom.
When I was diagnosed with my 5C vertebrae injury I found out that their was only one doctor which handled this type of injury.
Dr. Swampy resides at the Jackson Mississippi VA hospital, he travels from Jackson to Biloxi VA hospital to see the veterans with this type of injury.
He has been doing this for the past 20 years, and is still doing it. When I spoke with Dr. Swampy, I asked why he has stayed with the VA hospital for so long. He said that he did not have to worry about having a staff or paying other people, it was just easier staying with the VA.
One doctor for over 20 years working two VA hospitals. I believe every VA hospital should be the best staffed with doctors and nurses. Their is know reason for not hiring the best and paying for the best doctors in America.
Dr. Larry Fontanelle, chief of surgery for the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System for the past 20 years, is intensely proud of the way medicine is practiced throughout the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System, which is headquarted in Biloxi. It includes hospitals and clinics in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
He is irritated by the allegations in the series about the VA hospital system that has been published this week in The Sun Herald and other newspapers around the country.
"We do damned well," Fontanelle said. "We've been stereotyped. Any profession can't have total satisfaction of outcomes with every person...Any time the taxpayers are involved, a problem gets magnified."
One of the aspects of VA health care under attack in the series is the use of residents, specialists in training, without the supervision of fully trained specialists.
Fontanelle established the training program for residents at the Biloxi hospital 20 years ago, and staunchly defends the way it is run. The training program is affiliated with Tulane University Medical School and Louisiana State University School of Dentistry, as well as Keesler Medical Center.
"What we have here, other VA hospitals may not have," said Fontanelle, who is also the acting chief of primary care and chief of medicine for the Coast VA hospital system. "Our attending staff are full-time staff. We have four full-time staff surgeons who are all board-certified general surgeons. Two of them are second-boarded in thoracic. Their primary responsibility is to the patient, but also in training young doctors. We have no outside activity that would interfere with what we do here."
Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General in Washington, D.C., sent a team to the Coast to perform a thorough review of the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System.
The results of the review, published in June, listed numerous deficiencies in the Coast system, but also listed medical director Julie Catellier's plans for improvement.
Deficiencies included polarization of staff and management and an "environment of staff anger and mistrust"; the need to improve patient care and the quality of management; lack of staffing in critical areas such as nursing and pharmacy; patient waiting times; and pending lawsuits.
After each deficiency, Catellier wrote a plan for change. After most items, the OIG team wrote that they considered the problem resolved but would continue to monitor the hospital system's progress.
According to Fontanelle, many of the problems have already been fixed.
"We have improved," he said. "I can honestly tell you that the physicians have been appeased. Morale has improved. We have hired 100 personnel, the majority of which have been nurses."
Fontanelle said he has seen and been involved in making many changes and the efforts continue.
"You never become perfect, but always strive toward perfection," Fontanelle said. "And our director, Julie Catellier, has always been very responsive to the need to change."
In defense of the entire VA health care system, Fontanelle cited two articles published in December in the New England Journal of Medicine that poke holes in the notion that VA care is inferior.
The comparisons between the VA patient population and the Medicare population are inaccurate, he said, because they don't take into account the general health of the populations being compared.
"We (at the VA) see some of the sickest patients in the world," he said. "Many of them are aged and some are homeless. The average VA patient has diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, is overweight and has respiratory problems."
All of those factors influence the rate of survival of a heart attack.
"The VA medical system is the largest and greatest medical system in the world," Fontanelle said. "We have the greatest respect for, and want to take good care of, the medical needs of the most deserving people in the world, our veterans. We're working to get all our veterans' benefits restored."
Reni Winter can be reached at 896-0538 or at rbwinter@sunherald.com