Base hospital feeling pinch from staffing shortages

[Rose Siding]

CAMP PENDLETON – The war on terror half a world away is squeezing some military medical services at home.

Base hospital officials have announced longer waits for non-emergency care for the nearly 30,000 dependents and retirees who rely on Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton and its clinics for primary care.

Some of those clinics – including family and internal medicine and pediatrics – have lost nearly half their staffs because of deployments to Iraq and normal rotations to new duty stations, said Doug Allen, a spokesman for the base hospital.

Doctors and nurses are part of the staffing shortage.

In June, the demand for appointments was 15 percent greater than availability, prompting some patients to seek medical attention at the base emergency room and increasing non-emergency wait times from four or five hours to seven or eight........MORE.........

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040819/news_1mi19hospita.html

[artfan]

1. Here on the east coast....

Docs used to be stationed in one place for at least 3 years but I have had to chage my Primary Care Doc 3times in the last 3 years and my kids are now being seen by a nurse practicioner instead of a pediatrician because there no longer is a pedi department. I would not mind except the N.P is not a Pedi nurse.

Waits in the clinics are much longer and appointments are hard to come by. It is like a return to the Regan years.