Surgeon shortage at OKC VA
During a half-dozen days this month, the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center did not have a general surgeon on call or available for emergencies in the overnight hours because of the sudden and unexpected departure of two employees.
“If they come into our ER, what we’ll do is, we’ll just transfer them across the street to OU if it’s an emergency case,” said Wade Vlosich, the hospital’s director. Other hospitals in the city are backup options if OU Medical Center can’t take VA patients.
“This is not a process that is new to us. It happens frequently when these specialty providers leave and we’re just waiting to (replace) them,” he added.
The VA hospital's chief of surgery, Paul Munden, sent an email Oct. 31 to surgery staff and administrators. His team was down to a single fulltime surgeon, he wrote, and therefore could not cover emergency room surgeries and on-call surgeries during several stretches, such as Nov. 1-5, Nov. 12-13 and Nov. 21-27.
In the email, which was obtained by The Oklahoman, Munden said he expected to add surgeons in November and to update the schedule accordingly. Vlosich said a new surgeon starts Tuesday and another will join the hospital Nov. 25.
“The email you received, while it can look like there’s these emergency situations, it’s a fairly common thing,” said Vlosich, who called the surgeon shortage “a mini blip.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs has several programs that allow veterans to receive care outside of VA hospitals and bill the federal government, most commonly the Veterans Choice Program. As a result, veterans who arrive at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center but are transferred elsewhere during the surgeon shortage will not be billed extra.
“We actually met with OU and they knew this workload would be coming and knew about our loss of staff. So, it was not a surprise to them,” Vlosich said.
One of the two surgeons who left did so because of unspecified personal reasons. Another departed because his or her visa process was complete, a common reason. Foreign medical graduates can receive a visa waiver that allows them to remain in the U.S. longer if they work for the VA. When they’ve completed the requirements of their visa and become permanent residents, they often go into the more lucrative private sector.
“We still do general surgery,” Vlosich stressed on several occasions during an interview Friday. “We have general surgeons on board, so our operations continue. It’s just, we can’t have a provider coming in in the middle of the night every night.”
In addition to the two surgeons starting work this month, the VA is interviewing candidates for another surgery position in hopes of avoiding a similar shortage in the future, Vlosich said. The VA is also working with the University of Oklahoma to restart the state’s only cardiac surgery fellowship program, allowing it to train young heart surgeons.