In a Boston V.A. hospital, six social workers are conducting phone and telehealth visits with veterans from a single, crowded room, clinicians say. In Kansas City, providers are planning patient care while facing each other across narrow, cafeteria-style tables in a large, open space, according to staff members.
And in South Florida, psychiatric nurses have been treating veterans with mental health conditions in a hallway near a bathroom, sitting down with them in a makeshift medical bay jury-rigged out of filing cabinets and a translucent screen.
“People walking by can hear everything that’s going on,” said Bill Frogameni, an acute care psychiatric nurse at the Miami V.A. hospital and director of the local chapter of the National Nurses United union, referring to the patient intake setup in a V.A. facility in Homestead, Fla., outside Miami.
“The nurses are triaging these patients asking standard questions: ‘Do you feel like harming yourself or others? How long have you been feeling suicidal? Do you have a plan to harm yourself?’” Mr. Frogameni said. “It’s very personal stuff.”
“People walking by can hear everything that’s going on,” said Bill Frogameni, an acute care psychiatric nurse and director of the local chapter of the National Nurses United union in Miami.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
The cramped conditions are the result of President Trump’s decision to rescind remote work arrangements for federal employees, reversing a policy that at the V.A. long predated the pandemic. Since Mr. Trump’s order, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been scrambling to find adequate office space for tens of thousands of health care employees, even those who see most or all of their patients virtually, while maintaining the legal requirement of confidentiality.
