Vets Protest VA Hospital’s Program Cuts : Health care: About 50 picket against Sepulveda’s transfer of substance-abuse and psychiatric services.

Waving American flags and hand-made signs, about 50 veterans demonstrated outside the Sepulveda Veterans Administration medical center Wednesday to protest cuts in substance-abuse and psychiatric programs made after the complex was badly damaged in the Northridge earthquake.

VA officials last winter decided to demolish the Veterans Affairs Medical Center--Sepulveda rather than spend an estimated $188 million to rebuild the 431-bed facility. The hospital emergency room was closed and a number of inpatient programs were transferred to the larger West Los Angeles veterans medical center.

The VA plans to replace the Sepulveda center with a $53-million ambulatory care center that will offer a range of medical services, including outpatient surgery. Another $48 million will be spent on seismic improvements and repair work at Sepulveda.

But many San Fernando Valley veterans complain it is hard for them to get to West Los Angeles and that the care is not as good there. They also worry that lives may be jeopardized by not having full emergency services at Sepulveda.

VA officials at both medical centers insisted that no one’s health has been harmed or jeopardized by the changes at Sepulveda.

“I do not feel that lives have been endangered because we no longer have beds,” said Dollie Whitehead, Sepulveda’s associate director.

After the January earthquake, Sepulveda’s inpatient programs in mental health and drug and alcohol abuse were transferred to West Los Angeles. Sepulveda continues to provide outpatient care in those areas.

But veterans who protested Wednesday said they faced overcrowding, staff indifference and canceled appointments at West Los Angeles, the biggest of the 171 hospitals operated by the VA nationwide.

“They treat you like a number out there,” said Dan Tinder, 45, a Vietnam veteran from Reseda who has been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. “You’re a nobody.”

Sherrie E. Gogerty, a Van Nuys resident who served as an Army private in Saigon and was treated for alcoholism at Sepulveda, said its drug and alcohol recovery programs had an excellent reputation before the quake.

But without Sepulveda’s weeklong detoxification program and related services, she said, Valley-area veterans who want to get sober may not be able to do so, a situation that could lead to continued substance abuse and some deaths, she said.

Gogerty said many veterans with drug and drinking problems do not have cars and are in no condition to find their way to the West Los Angeles complex in Brentwood, about 16 miles south of the Sepulveda medical center along the San Diego Freeway.

“I was such a wreck I couldn’t find my way from my kitchen to the bathroom, let alone from Van Nuys to Brentwood,” she said.

“It’s not like you get on the freeway and drive there. . . . These people are down and out. They’re homeless. They’re wet-brained and incompetent. They’ve been sleeping under underpasses. They don’t have the wherewithal for transportation.”

Gogerty said that while Sepulveda’s substance abuse programs were on locked wards and involved intensive counseling and group discussions, the same programs at West Los Angeles are less structured, allowing addicted veterans to slip out and continue their drinking or drug-taking.

VA spokeswoman Harriett Bordenave acknowledged there is a two-week waiting list for veterans wanting to enter substance abuse programs at West Los Angeles. But she said veterans are receiving adequate care there.

Marianne Davis, consumer affairs officer at the West Los Angeles complex, said that while the hospital has flubbed some appointments with Valley-area veterans, “I don’t get the sense it’s a large problem.”

Davis said drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs at West Los Angeles are just as comprehensive as at Sepulveda. Although West Los Angeles patients are not locked in, they can be dismissed from the program if they are inebriated, Bordenave said.

Bordenave also denied there is a lack of transportation for veterans between the Valley and West Los Angeles. The VA runs shuttles carrying 15 patients per week between the two facilities, and such rides are open to any Sepulveda patient, she said.