Hospital Hot Box of Stale Air, Foul Moods : Government: A dedication ceremony was held for a new veterans’ facility in a Pittsburgh suburb 11 months ago. However, patients in the old building have been unable to move in because of delays in awarding a telephone contract.

Darlene Castelluci has seen the problems of an old, understaffed veterans’ hospital.

She has felt the heat of rooms without air conditioning and watched men eat meals with bottles of their urine sitting nearby.

“The nurses can’t take care of patients the way they want to. They don’t have time,” said Castelluci, whose 48-year-old husband, Tony, has been hospitalized with multiple sclerosis for 3 1/2 years.

All the more reason, she said, to hurry up and open an already-built hospital right next to the nearly 70-year-old building in suburban Pittsburgh.

The new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital has central air conditioning and will employ about 500 people, an increase of 100 or so.

Although a dedication ceremony was held 11 months ago, patients in the old building have been unable to move in because of delays in awarding a telephone contract.

“When you dedicate something, you assume you’ll be in it after a month, not a year,” Castelluci said. “It’s not that I want to complain, but I’m not happy coming here and seeing what’s going on.”

Neither are others who have watched the 400-bed, $72-million building remain empty since last October.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Augustine Scarpelli, a patient and 71-year-old World War II veteran. “They’ve put all those buildings up in less time than it’s taken to install phones.”

Not exactly. Construction of the building began in 1990 and was completed, except for the phones, in October, 1993.

That’s the same month the Department of Veterans Affairs began soliciting bids from minority-owned companies to install telephone, paging and computer systems, said Michael Stamler, a spokesman for the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA’s role was to certify that the VA hired a minority company.

Bidding closed a month later. But the VA didn’t begin negotiating with minority businesses until April, and the $2.3-million contract with Ray Communications of Bala Cynwyd wasn’t signed until June 3, Stamler said.

“This is an unfortunate situation that should not have happened,” hospital director Thomas Cappello said. Terry Jemison, a VA spokesman in Washington, said he couldn’t say immediately what caused the delay.

U.S. Rep. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who urged the VA to speed up the process, said he suspects the contract was sitting on the desk of an administrator who didn’t act on it for months.

“Someone was too busy doing other things, or didn’t realize the effects it was going to have,” said Santorum.

Phone lines are being snaked through the new building, and now it is expected to open Nov. 1.

Patients are glad to hear that. The older hospital’s electrical system can support window units for only about half the 400 patients. Most rooms are shared by four people.

Besides air conditioning, the new hospital offers private rooms for nursing home patients.

Cappello said VA procedures are being changed to make sure a similar delay isn’t repeated.

Nonetheless, “You’re a lot better off in a 1993 building than in a 1925 building,” he said.

The hospital cares for elderly and chronically ill veterans from the Pittsburgh area and parts of West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania has eight other VA hospitals.