Veteran Kills Himself in Parking Lot of V.A. Hospital on Long Island

By KRISTINA REBELOAUG. 24, 2016

A 76-year-old veteran committed suicide on Sunday in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island, where he had been a patient, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.

Peter A. Kaisen, of Islip, was pronounced dead after he shot himself outside Building 92, the nursing home at the medical center.

The hospital is part of the Veterans Affairs medical system, the nation’s largest integrated health care organization, which has been under scrutiny since 2014, when the department confirmed that numerous patients had died awaiting treatment at a V.A. hospital in Phoenix. Officials there had tried to cover up long waiting times for 1,700 veterans seeking medical care. A study released by the Government Accountability Office in April indicated that the system had yet to fix its scheduling problems.

Why Mr. Kaisen decided to end his life was not immediately known, but two people connected to the hospital who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his death said that he had been frustrated that he was unable to see an emergency-room physician for reasons related to his mental health. “He went to the E.R. and was denied service,” one of the people, who currently works at the hospital, said. “And then he went to his car and shot himself.”

The worker questioned why Mr. Kaisen had not been referred to the hospital’s Building 64, its mental health center. The staff member said that while there was normally no psychologist at the ready in the E.R., one was always on call, and that the mental health building was open “24/7.”

“Someone dropped the ball,” the worker said. “They should not have turned him away.”

Christopher Goodman, a spokesman for the hospital, said that there “was no indication that he presented to the E.R. prior to the incident.” It is unclear if any official record was made of a visit by Mr. Kaisen.

Mr. Goodman said “the employees here at Northport feel this loss deeply and extend their thoughts and prayers to all those impacted by this tragedy.”

Mr. Kaisen’s family declined to comment.

Lt. Kevin Beyrer, a Suffolk County detective, said that the F.B.I. was carrying out the investigation into Mr. Kaisen’s death because it had occurred on federal property. He said that the V.A. police had called the county police on Sunday at 12:32 p.m. and that it appeared that Mr. Kaisen had been alone at the time of his death.

The Northport hospital has been under scrutiny for mismanagement and poor care since The New York Times reported in May that it had closed all five of its operating rooms for months after sand-size black particles began falling from air ducts. The office of Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican whose First Congressional District includes Northport, had been looking into the allegations, Eric Amidon, Mr. Zeldin’s chief of staff, said in an email to The Times in June.

Jennifer DiSiena, Mr. Zeldin’s communications director, said on Wednesday that his office was trying to confirm the details of Mr. Kaisen’s death and “piece everything together.”

Veteran didn't kill himself.   The VA killed him; he just finished their job for them.

I was an ER nurse.  That is a nightmare that you hope never happens. Whoever turned him away needs to fry.
They must---MUST get at least a screening eval by someone from Psych.


If they are a threat to themselves or others, you don't let them walk.  


I don't care if they fucking  sit for 20 hours waiting for psych, you don't let them leave.  






Oh, and the closed ORs.  


I assure you a gaggle of anesthesia people, OR nurses and techs were getting paid to staff ORs with no cases.  


I hope I'm wrong. Hopefully someone sent them to other VAs to do cases.


 

VA: giving veterans a second chance to die for their country since 1930.

The va should never turn a vet away.

Mr. Goodman must be vying to be the Whine Haus spokesman for 0.

How can people take a job at the VA and not give it their all? This isn't one of those receptionist/ front desk/ we'll get to you as soon as we can type jobs. People's lives are in your hands and everything you say and do affects them. They need to quit hiring half ass workers.

RIP

I'm a psych nurse that does mental health assessments in an ER. The V.A. is terrible to work with and rarely accepts patients from our ER. Most of the time we have to admit them to our MHU and then try to transfer them the next day after the social workers make their phone calls.

Edit: they won't take anyone involuntarily either. In my city, police often complete an affidavit for 96-hour hold (like a Baker Act deal) on anyone who threatens suicide. The V.A. has refused to take patients before from me who are actually receptive to getting help, consenting to treatment and ok to transfer because the cops did an affidavit. It's fucking ridiculous.

Not to mention if by some miracle they don't say no right away they almost always have no beds.

I get criticized regularly with "why'd you admit X? They don't really need to be here."  But if there's any doubt I err on the side of caution and recommend hospitalization to my docs. And I work slowly, carefully and document the shit out of things.

Who knows in this case, though. Can't save everyone. Bottom line is our country needs more outpatient psychiatrists, psych NPs and counsellors. For someone not at imminent risk of hurting themselves or others that we don't admit and suggest outpatient follow-up, they're often looking at appointments being 6-8 weeks in the future. No joke.

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FBHo's America

RIP                                                                                                                                       Huffington Post claims POTUS has kept his 2008 promise to veterans http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55e09a0de4b0b7a96338ca2f

Trumps gonna mention this

They have a nice golf course there.

Gotta have your priorities in order.

damn

Fixed it for you.

The VA's only mission should be to pay claims for vets getting care at their hometown hospital or others as the PCP and consulting doctors require.

They are deliberately letting people suffer and die to line their own pockets with bonuses.    There are a lot of people in the VA that deserve a firing squad.  

This isn't just something that happened after Obama, either - they've been doing it longer than that. This is 100% a product of DC and the culture of the federal bureaucracy.   You see the same bullshit at other agencies; it's just more tragic here due to what they're supposed to be doing.


I have watched them dick people around for years.   The games they play with cancelling appointments and/or moving them out of state with no notice made no sense at the time; now it's clear that it is deliberate and systemic.

We're the government, we're here to help. Riggggght.

RIP peter

The VA absolutely blows.  I had shoulder surgery in the Corps and had intense pain ever since. One VA doc told me that the only option was a full shoulder replacement and I shouldn't do that until my only options were that or a bullet in the head.  I gave up and was on narcotics for years.  Finally called after I moved and needed a new PC.  Got an appointment for 31 days later.  Right after I called an ortho doc in Rockwall and had an appointment for two days later.  A week later an MRI and a week later a surgery date.   So in the time it took to get one appointment at the VA I went to an ortho doc, got checked out, had surgery and had the better part of a week to recover before going to my first appointment with my new pcp.   He of course called and asked me to come in a few hours early, which i did, then he made me wait for over an hour past my original appointment time.  They couldn't care less about their patients!

Over time, the VA has developed an institutional culture of "This would be a great job, if it wasn't for the customers."  This is the result of decades of failed leadership, combined with the procedural difficulty involved in disciplining .gov employees for poor performance.  Throw in the federal .gov's de facto hiring policy of "instead of giving you reparations for being black/native american/eskimo/new-flavor-of-the-day-minority, we will just give you a comfortable drone job with little expectation of actual performance," and you ultimately create a witch's brew of incompetence and I-don't-give-a-shit attitudes.

This culture is not limited to the VA; it's fairly standard across a lot of the fed.gov administrative agencies.  Most Americans don't actually deal directly with the fed.gov much, so they aren't normally familiar with its bureaucratic idiocy (the exception is the IRS, which nearly all Americans deal with at least annually, and which also happens to be the most hated .gov agency; see any correlation there?).  It just happens that currently the USA is smitten with love for its veterans, there are a LOT of veterans seeking VA healthcare and disability compensation benefits due to OIF/OEF and Vietnam (those guys are reaching the age where they get diagnosed with the diseases that are presumed to be from Agent Orange exposure), and thus the public becomes outraged when faced with the total incompetence of the .gov.

Yes, I know I am painting with a broad brush.  Some VA programs are pretty squared away, like the Post 9/11 GI Bill operation.  Some VA healthcare centers do a damn good job.  Some dedicated VA employees are constantly fighting the good fight for our veterans.  But "Some" is not an acceptable level of performance when failure means a veteran becomes destitute and/or suicidal.

No.

They need to get rid of the union that protects shit half assed workers. They also need to do away with the management that hires their friends or family over actual qualified people.

I spent 8 months in a VA hospital. The 80/20 rule is the only thing going there. 20% do the actual work and 80% are mouth breathing their way to a pension.

I couldn't handle the shit there after a while. The incompetence is fucking deep. I went back to the private sector and never looked back. Got one hell of a pay raise for it too. I liked working with vets, I do my best to steer them all away from the VA when I can. Place is a meat market.

A f-ing men brother.

Want to know whats even worse?  The Bernieites want the VA for the entire country.



 

That's vivid, LOL!

And just think, all Americans will get this kind of wonderful care in less than 4 years. Both hitlery and orange Jesus want all Americans on VA care.

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I've found that the longer a VA employee has been there, the more likely they are to be cynical and jaded about the system.  My daddy(a disabled veteran) worked at the VARO for almost 30 years. His best friend(also a veteran) worked at VARO for 35. I've been a disabled vet for almost 30 years. My last two PCPs were both retired .mil and have since also retired from the VA. All of those people despised the system, but did their damnest to help the veterans.

ETA: My next door neighbor is also retired Army and just double retired  from the VARO. She's happier than a pig in shit to be gone from there.

Because some people that work at the VA, do not care about veterans. It's simply a high paying, government job.

It's not just them, it's every brainless democrat. Always telling me how the rest of the world is better than us but never willing to get the fuck out and go anywhere else. Just doing their best to fuck us into the 3rd world. They are enemies to the republic and it's past time they be treated as such.

It's not some. At least where I was it was at least half.

20% really cared and busted their asses to at least try to keep the place going and the other 30% were just trying to keep their heads down and coast into a pension when they hit 20 years.

I watched a couple of them go while I was there. They hit 20 years and a day and they were out the door like their ass was on fire.

Did you actually just ask that about a .gov job?

I can recall the problems my grandfather had with the VA and getting the mustard gas burn areas on his back/shoulder treated.
This isn't a new problem.
Now, how do you think that a VA system for everyone will work out?

Fucked up but true.

 

I am very thankful that I never incurred any sort of injury that would have left me in the clutches of the VA.

An example of Obamacares goals.

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And all that will come of it is more drum beating about vets, mental health and access to guns.

...and Trump...

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he had been frustrated that he was unable to see an emergency-room physician for reasons related to his mental health.

“He went to the E.R. and was denied service,” one of the people, who currently works at the hospital, said.



“And then he went to his car and shot himself.”

He showed them ............. the poor bastard.

RIP