From: Walter Gilbert
Great news about the surgery, sorry to hear about the food.
Could be that's their way of discouraging lengthy hospital stays and
discharge appeals.
It doesn't work. I should have been out on Friday, and I would have been
if I hadn't gotten sicker at every meal. I wanted to get out of there on
Friday.
I think it's just a well meaning, misguided cost-cutting measure.
The contractor bid too low and is cutting way too many quality corners
struggling to make a go of the contract. Contract meals don't have to be
so ghastly.
But what the VA saved with the right hand, they more than lost with the
left. Because it didn't discourage me from lengthening my stay. It
impeded me getting the hell out of there.
Figure under the old system it might have cost them $15 per day for my
meals. Instead they're only spending $10 a day ... or $7.50.
The downside of those savings is I couldn't choke down the food. What
little I did manage to choke down wouldn't stay down. And I couldn't be
discharged until I could eat.
It actually made me sicker and I stayed two additional days before I
could be discharged. Figure it generously at $500 a day to keep me in
the hospital (probably cost the VA closer to $1000 every day I was in
there).
They saved $15 on food for Thursday and Friday. Which they turned around
and spent anyway on food because I was there Saturday and Sunday.
*PLUS* it cost another $1000 for the two additional days I stayed in the
hospital because the food made me so sick they couldn't discharge me.
And when I did get out of there on Sunday I was sicker than I should
have been because I'd had no effective nutrition for 6 days. Nothing but
clear liquids after midnight Monday => Tuesday and nothing that managed
to stay down longer than a minute Thursday through Sunday.
I did manage to eat something, I think a cup of clear broth, in SICU on
Wednesday night and got a nibble of egg & a cup of coffee on Thursday
morning.
It wasn't until I went into the general surgical ward Thursday evening
that my problems with the food began. Must have missed lunch Thursday in
transit somewhere.
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