Trump's VA presses mental health care in overcrowded offices and makes privacy concerns

In a hospital in Boston VA, six social workers carry out telephone and telemedicine visits with veterans from a single, overcrowded room, say clinicians. In Kansas City, the providers are planning patient care, while, according to the employees, they stand in a large open space in a large open space in cafeteria style.

And in South Florida, psychiatric nurses treat veterans with mental illnesses in a hallway near a bathroom and sit down with them in a temporary jury jury that is carried out by the filing cabinets and a translucent screen.

“People who pass by can listen to everything that is going on,” said Bill Frogameni, a psychiatric nurse of acute care in the Miami VA Hospital and director of the local chapter of the Nurse Nurses Union, who are on the patient in an outpatient VA facility in Homestead, Florida, outside of Miami.

“The nurses have these patients who ask standard questions:” Do you want to harm yourself or others? How long have you felt suicide? Do you have a plan to harm yourself? “, Said Frogameni.” It's very personal stuff. “

The cramped conditions are the result of President Trump's decision to remove distant work agreements for federal employees and to reverse a guideline that was long before the Pandemy in VA pandemic. Since the order of Mr. Trump, the Ministry of Veteran Affairs has been trying to find adequate office space for tens of thousands of health care employees, even those who see most or all of their patients virtually, and at the same time maintain the legal requirements of confidentiality.