GRAND JUNCTION — A Vietnam veteran and his former social worker are calling for an outside investigation of the Grand Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center for what they claim was inadequate and incompetent care that left the veteran incapacitated.
Veteran Rodger Holmes, in a sent to local, state and federal officials and veterans’ organizations Tuesday, said he nearly died from treatment for hepatitis C because the hospital did not have have a liver specialist on staff and would not send the 64-year-old to an outside specialist.
“For three weeks of treatment I was fine, then I got really sick. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand up hardly,” Holmes said.
Holmes’ story has been corroborated by social worker Chris Blumenstein. Blumenstein was Holmes’ caseworker before he resigned in protest over Holmes’ treatment and what he viewed as systemic problems in hospital management.
“It’s not just that his (Holmes’) care went horribly wrong. But there is no transparency and accountability,” Blumenstein said when the two men released their report on Veterans Day.
VA Medical Center spokesman Paul Sweeney said Wednesday he could not comment directly about Holmes’ case because he did not have the proper release from Holmes to make his 1,868 pages of medical records public. But he did confirm that the hospital does not have a liver specialist — a hepatologist — on staff. Sweeney said the hospital does have a protocol for treating patients with , and that now means sending them to specialists in the Denver area for treatment.
Holmes was formerly homeless and addicted to alcohol before he entered a treatment program and moved into a housing complex for veterans four years ago. Since then, he had been sober and had been volunteering 20 hours a week at the Salvation Army.
He became incapacitated during his treatment with three powerful drugs to kill the hepatitis virus. In a detailed time-line outlining his treatment at the VA hospital, he said his care was passed off to a primary care physician, a nurse practitioner and a pharmacist as his health deteriorated to the point that he was hospitalized and then placed in a VA hospice/nursing home unit for three months.
He said he was never given the option of seeing a liver specialist outside the VA medical center in Grand Junction.
The in recent nationwide federal investigations for deficient care and for not adequately addressing whistleblower complaints.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm
