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| Virgil Kinnumen, a patient at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis, questions the VA Secretary and Sen. Norm Coleman about the budget for veterans' medical services. (MPR Photo/Art Hughes) |
Minneapolis, Minn. — Nicholson spent more than a half hour touring the new trauma unit, scheduled to open next month.
The Minneapolis VA Medical Center is one of four in the country that treats serious multi-trauma combat patients. Currently about a dozen trauma patients receive treatment in two separate units. When the new center opens, those units will be combined.
Nicholson met with doctors and nurses at the center, praising their work and noting the positive feedback he'd gotten from most of the patients.
"For those that are here with the VA, I want to say thank you to them for being such good devoted caregivers," Nicholson said. "You've noted that. And it's that way all over the country."
Nicholson came to Minnesota at the invitation of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, who accompanied him on the tour. Republican Rep. and Senate candidate Mark Kennedy also took part in the tour. The three met with a half dozen veteran patients selected by the hospital.
They fielded pointed questions from Virgil Kinnumen, 72, who lives in Menahga. The opening at his collar revealed the top of a freshly stitched incision in his chest. The hospital performed a heart valve replacement, surgery made all the more risky by Kinnumen's emphysema.
Kinnumen complimented the care he received at the Minneapolis facility, but wanted to know why it appears so short-staffed.
"Why is the funds taken away from the VA? We don't have enough nurses, we don't have enough people to help the veterans when they come in here for surgery," Kinnumen said. "Why can't we get funds to help the VA hospitals, instead of spending it on some other goofy things?"
Nicholson responded the he's heard mainly positive comments from staff.
"Actually, it gets a lot of funding. VA funding increased 57 percent in the last four years. The Congress and president have been very supportive of the VA," said Nicholson.
"Where is that money?" Kinnumen pressed on. "I don't see it. We're always behind on everything here."
Kinnumen served in the Air Force in the early '50s. He says he's been coming to the Twin Cities VA center for more than 40 years.
Sen. Coleman told Kinneman he witnesses the budget priorities for the VA every time he comes there for care. "I hope you see it. Part of it you're seeing with these (doctors) over here," said Coleman.
Another veteran, Merle Wehr, 73, of Waterville, says care at the center is top-notch. But he's frustrated by the limits on benefits.
"My biggest beef is you go in to get some help with something and they say you're not qualified," Wehr said. "Now come on. Just because I learned to duck bullets in Korea, does that mean I don't qualify for anything?"
Wehr, who is in the hospital to get a plate inserted to repair a broken hip, says he was wounded by shrapnel in Korea, but the medical records were lost.
Since the Iraq war started, the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center has added nearly 200 positions. The facility's annual budget has increased more than $90 million, to $390 million in the 2005 fiscal year.
During Nicholson's visit, one younger veteran sat apart from the others. Scars crease the hair on two sides of 23-year-old Noah Gordon's scalp. The former Marine Corps corporal spent more than a month in the VA's trauma unit in 2003, after a seven-ton supply truck he was riding in lost control and flipped three times.
Gordon told the three political leaders he has no complaints.
"Went pretty good. It's kind of nice that they came out here and see how their veterans are doing at the VA," said Gordon.
After Nicholson left, the other veterans in the group said they were glad to have had the chance to tell the secretary what was on their minds.
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