ANGRY over recent revelations of dilapidated mouldy hospital buildings infested with rats and cockroaches at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, President George Bush has scrambled to respond to public outcry over poor treatment of patients at the U.S. Army’s hospital in Washington, D.C.
“This is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to our country and it’s not going to continue,” the U.S. president said as the Army fired the head of the medical centre and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired army secretary Francis Harvey.
Gates said he thought the problems at the U.S. Army’s top hospital were related to leadership. “I am disappointed that some in the army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care at Walter Reed.”
“Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems,” Gates said.
The problems of the Guam Memorial Hospital may be solved with the kind of public outcry that now motivates the Bush administration. Within a week of the Washington Post’s publication of the problems at Walter Reed, the military was painting rooms, killing roaches and mice, removing mold — and paying attention to the bureaucratic problems that wounded soldiers faced.
President Bush himself has apologized to the Walter Reed patients and their families. Congressional hearings have now commenced and the sounds of righteous indignation ring again familiarly in the power corridors of Washington.
All this now because of one concerned citizen who found out about the horrible hospital conditions at Walter Reed and called the media.
Mind you, the problems at Walter Reed medical center just like the problems at GMH have been well-documented over the past three years. There is apparently no lack of paper to prove that over the past three years, Walter Reed hospital — and GMH — have had substandard facilities and have failed to deliver safe patient care.
Over the past three years, numerous complaints about Walter Reed have been raised by injured soldiers and their families.
Bureaucratic inertia and outright mismanagement of hospital resources have contributed to the disgraceful treatment of battle-scarred Americans who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Because of the courage of one concerned citizen and the power of the press, the problems at Walter Reed are now getting resolved.
The problems at GMH have yet to be taken as seriously by our island’s leaders.
Guam has suffered since 1983 with an acute care medical facility that fails to meet national standards for a safe, competent hospital. Over the past four years, Guam Memorial Hospital administrators have repeatedly admitted to a multitude of structural problems at the hospital including cracked ceilings, inadequately ventilated bathrooms, and rat-infested buildings.
At the beginning of this millennium, Governor Felix Camacho promised to achieve JCAHO accreditation for GMH by 2005. Last year, he promised to do it by 2007. With hundreds of thousands of unpaid medical vendor accounts and tens of millions in delinquent Retirement Fund contributions burdening the GMH operating budget, Lieutenant Governor Mike Cruz said earlier this year that the Governor’s promise now seems unrealistic.
Over the past four years, the Government of Guam has refused to reduce unnecessary employee positions at the Guam Memorial Hospital. More than 200 positions have been identified by hospital administrators and independent auditors as non-critical to patient care.
This unmandated funding of unnecessary employees translates annually into more than $15 million in unnecessary personnel expenditures that could have gone towards paying for more nurses and allied health staff or at least towards paying down the Retirement Fund debt so that hard-working senior employees could retire with dignity.
Maybe a lot of stories in the local media about the indignity and suffering being faced by patients at GMH will shame the governor and Legislature into acting swiftly on the dilapidated hospital conditions. Maybe the political pressure of an informed populace will force the “right-sizing” of GMH so that adequate nursing and allied health staff can be hired. Or maybe all the negative media exposure will rile up a discontent electorate and a recall initiative will result. We shall see.

VINCENT TAIJERON AKIMOTO, MD
Tamuning , Guam