For many years I have been connected with a large sanitorium where we had strict discipline and little entertainment. The patients were satisfied. Our average stay of patients is six months. In looking over your sanitoriums you don’t find many patients staying six months.
When I was in the Army I was in one of the largest t.b. sanitoriums of the country. They sent back hundreds of men to this hospital and people came out and entertained them. They were entertained every night by the Red Cross with moving pictures, they were entertained in the afternoons by a local organization; they were entertained to death. These men afterwards got out and were not satisfied unless they were placed in an institution which was a social center. After I went out I was Chief of the Eleventh t. b. district of Denver. I noticed that the men who were treated at Fort Lyon were a better class to handle because they were not so much entertained. Once in a while I would talk to some of these men and ask them if they wanted to get well, as I could tell them a place to go and frequently I used to send them to Fort Stanton where they could not be entertained and they could get well.
If you have ever lived in an isolated place, you can appreciate it. My wife and I had pioneered this sanitorium together for quite a while. Once in a while we used to go to Denver and we could enjoy any show they had in Denver, even the 10–cent and 20–cent ones. I have heard men criticize entertainments at Fitzsimmons; they would swear and walk out while Madame Schumann-Heinck was singing, because they were dissatisfied; they were saturated with entertainment. I am against entertainment for tuberculous patients only in a very mild degree. We have one picture show a week and they enjoy that picture show. We have only Sunday School Sunday morning. The minister will bring in a few amateur singers and the boys think they are wonderful; they are wonderful; and they will all sing.
I have some fifty War Risk patients at my Sanitorium. I have known them for three years. I know them all by name. They were kicked out from Sanitorium to Sanitorium. They came down to Stanton. I went there on the first of July and no man has asked for his transfer or discharge. I suppose there is less turn-over of t.b. patients at any place than at Fort Stanton, where there is no entertainment. These men can go anywhere. We have a 30,000 or 40,000 acre farm. We try to get these men interested in the different things in the Sanitorium. On Christmas we let the men arrange the Christmas trees. They amuse themselves down there. The men trap quite a number of wild animals, bob cats, etc. and they are interested in the place we have, which is close to nature. You would be surprised how little amusement you need for entertainment if you get away from it. You have got to control these men and direct them every minute in the day. You have got to give them a task. Have their hours for rest; their hours for exercise. It is up to you who are running Sanitoriums to entertain your men. You might lecture to them; that is entertainment; but don’t have them twice a week or three times a week. Once in a great while the men are interested in the study of their disease. Don’t speak to them in scientific terms, let them understand the disease. They say in the curing of tuberculosis it depends more upon what a man has from his neck up than what he has from the neck down. Impress upon them that they have got to live a careful life. Keep people out who want to entertain them. Your men will be just as well and better satisfied with little entertainment if you keep them busy all day long.
DR. SMITH, U.S.P.H.S.: I wanted to discuss this afternoon a matter which is of great concern to all branches of the service, and that is Order 59 as applied to transfers from hospital to hospital. Order 59 is going to be watched rather carefully by the Veterans’ Bureau. Order 59 lists hospitals and gives a certain number of hospitals to each district. A district manager in New York may take a tuberculous patient and send him to a local hospital or he may send him away to a certain designated hospital to which he has blanket authority to send him, Oteen or Fitzsimmons; but according to Order 59, once they send a man to a local hospital, the district manager may not remove the man from that hospital and send the man to Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver. In other words, it is worth watching to see whether Order 59 will not rather tempt the district managers to make a snap diagnosis on the ground and send away to the hospital to which he has blanket authorization to make transfers, on the one hand, a man whose disease is so far advanced, that it might be unwise to send him; or, on the other hand, men with questionable diagnosis. It will be worth watching. I am sure the Veterans’ Bureau will desire information on the subject as to whether you who are out in the tuberculous hospitals will receive classes of patients who are unsuitable in the usual sense of the word for transfer.
Here is another thing we shall all need to watch and concerning which the Veterans’ Bureau will I know desire information. Will the practice of sending patients to the local general hospitals result in a piling up of patients who need to be transferred and whose transfers will be delayed. We all know that a transfer is indicated not only for the purpose of providing a climatic change and we all know that in certain sections of the country there are provided beds for tuberculous patients and it is necessary to keep these beds filled.
According to the present practice and strict interpretation of order 59, if the medical officer in charge of the Naval Hospital in New York has a tuberculous patient and wants to effect his discharge to Fitzsimmons, he first asks the district manager for permission to transfer the patient. The district manager in turn asks the Director of the Veterans’ Bureau; the Director of the Veterans’ Bureau advises the district manager, who in turn advises the officer in charge of the Navy Hospital. Now it will be necessary to watch and see whether this effects an undesirable delay in making the transfers. The Veterans’ Bureau will desire to be informed if such is the case.
There is another thing. A patient under treatment at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, and fit for discharge cannot, according to a strict interpretation of Order 59 be discharged without invoking the same authorities who sent him there. In other words, he must take it up with the district manager, who then advises the man in charge of the hospital.
Order 59 is magnificent in this, if it works out: that no man will be transferred from one hospital to another except upon the recommendation of the medical officer in charge, and you who have had experience in this matter will know what that means. It means that it is not the man with the longest and strongest pull who will be transferred but the man whose transfer is recommended by the officer in charge of the hospital. We are prepared to assist in every possible way in carrying out that order but it is necessary for us to watch the effect from the field and get advices from all hospitals concerned, as to whether this order will not need modification.
SURGEON F. H. MCKEON, USPHS: Some have stated that they were in ignorance of the existence of G. O. 27. At Hospital # 64, upon the receipt of that order we immediately had about one hundred copies made and the entire hospital personnel was supplied therewith. After that every man upon admission was furnished with a copy, together with a copy of the rules of the hospital, for which he signed a receipt. I offer that as a suggestion.