VA Hospital

Cessation of total inpatient care at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center is an inappropriate solution (“Sepulveda VA Hospital to Be Torn Down,” March 15). While it may be necessary to temporarily relocate surgical and long-term-care cases to other facilities until complete reconstruction is accomplished, the care provided to veterans from Bakersfield, Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley must not be disrupted or deferred in the wake of the events of Jan. 17.

Furthermore, there is one service provided by the Sepulveda VAMC that is so crucial and so necessary that its continuance should be of paramount concern to the current Administration. That function is the Chemical Dependency Treatment Unit, a three-pronged program that involves a five-to-seven-day inpatient detoxification, a 21-to 28-day inpatient rehabilitation program and finally an open-ended daily outpatient program with an initial 12-week patient commitment.

If the decision to partially relocate or otherwise disjoint this program is tolerated, veterans will die. It is a fact that because of the Sepulveda CDTU a great many lives have been saved. One of them is mine.

SHERRIE E. GOGERTY

Van Nuys

Since outpatient services are running in many functional buildings at the Sepulveda VA, why waste millions on some new building dedicated solely to outpatient care?

The Sepulveda VA is also one of the teaching and research arms of the UCLA medical complex. If you want to cut off one of the arms of UCLA because the public can’t afford it, then I suppose that’s just a grim fact of economic reality. But be intellectually honest enough to admit that this is a step backward, not forward.

JOHN PARSONS MD

Anaheim