Dr. HAWLEY. I will certainly check on that and inform you of the result.

Mr. Ross. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. WHEELER. Yes.

Mr. Ross. General, can you give us, if you recall, the reasons why the Bureau of the Budget denied the request of the Veterans Administration?

Dr. HAWLEY. No, sir, I do not know what the Bureau of the Budget thinks.

Mr. Ross. I make that inquiry again to ascertain if possibly they took into consideration that some of our hospitals may be overstaffed at the moment?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Mr. Ross. And I again ask the General if, in his program of readjustment, that has been taken care of?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

I should have answered your other question more fully:

The principal reason for the reduction was that for some reason they estimated for the fiscal year 1948 only 62 percent bed occupancy in our existing general medical and surgical hospitals, whereas it is actually running around 90 percent.

As one example, their computations on money for rations and medical supplies, which is always computed on a patient-day basis, they used the figure of 38,000,000 patient-days, whereas we will run, if we keep these beds full, we will run considerably over-how much increase was that, do you remember?

Dr. PRESS. About 1,500,000 or 2,000,000.

Dr. HAWLEY. The money which they estimated would be sufficient for rations would have fallen short some $9,000,000.

I think they estimated on a 74-cent-a-day ration which would show that the original thinking on it was some 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 patient days short of what we will probably run.

Mr. KEARNEY. Are your beds filled today, General?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Those that we have staffed are full.

Mr. WHEELER. I have just one other question.

I do not mean to make a particular case of this but there is a general policy involved here, I think. For instance, there is very little difference in the size of the two towns of Thomasville, Ga., where there now exists Finney Hospital, and I believe you said there were approximately 1,500 beds there.

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Mr. WHEELER. You are closing that hospital and going over to Americus, 90 miles away, and building a new hospital which will have 200 beds.

In other words, the question I am asking, is this:

Is it purely a matter of getting rid of some beds so that you can better man the 200 beds?

Dr. HAWLEY. No, so that we can better man other beds that we now have in existence because that hospital in Americus will not be finished before the fiscal year 1950.

Mr. WHEELER. When will the one in Thomasville be closed?
Dr. HAWLEY. We hope by the opening of the fiscal year 1948.
Mr. WHEELER. In other words, by July 1?

Mr. Ross. Will the gentleman yield to me again?

Mr. WHEELER. Just one other question and then I shall.

My interest, of course, is, generally speaking, for the veterans, and, of course, to be able to answer these inquiries that come to me. They keep asking me about this. I have telegrams on my desk now asking me to use my influence to keep that hospital open and when the Legion Posts and the VFW Posts, and so forth, look at this, they see a new hospital being built in Americus, and one being built in Tallahassee, I believe, 60 miles away, and they can not very well understand why you are closing a 1,500 bed hospital in Thomasville, and going over to Americus and building a 200 bed hospital and down to Tallahassee and building another one. It is very difficult for me to explain to them why that is taking place.

That is the reason I am asking the question.

Mr. Ross. General, have they opened any new hospitals since January?

Dr. HAWLEY. January 1 of this year?

Mr. Ross. Yes.

Dr. PRESS. Yes; there were some hospitals opened after January. Dr. HAWLEY. I would like to correct the record.

My information at the moment is that four actually have started receiving patients since the 1st of January, although they may have been opened and staffed prior to that time.

Mr. Ross. Opened and staffed prior to that time?

Dr. HAWLEY. That is right. Opened and partially staffed prior to that time.

Mr. Ross. What was the personnel load in January?

As I remember, I think it has been testified that it is now 61,521. Dr. HAWLEY. That is right, sir. The figures for January is approximately 55,700 full-time medical personnel.

Mr. Ross. I am still trying to find out if the General feels that under his program of readjustment, some of these hospitals can be reduced in their staff and still operate efficiently?

Dr. HAWLEY. Some of them will have to be reduced in their staff, but there are only a few.

As an over-all picture, I do not think we will have to readjust very much between branches.

I can give you an example. It is already in our estimates for next year, and that is that Branch 4, which includes the States of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, will have to reduce staffs, whereas there are other branches which are understaffed. The over-all picture of the branches is that we think they are understaffed.

Mr. RANKIN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Ross. I yield.

Mr. RANKIN. General Hawley, I think we ought to have this proposition cleared up.

Is this general hospital, the Finney General Hospital at Thomasville, Ga., which is being closed, a temporary hospital?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. RANKIN. It is not a regular veterans' hospital?
Dr. HAWLEY. No, sir; it is a temporary hospital.
Mr. RANKIN. It is a temporary hospital?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. RANKIN. That fact has not been brought out.

Mr. WHEELER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RANKIN. Yes.

Mr. WHEELER. If the beds and facilities are available there, why should it be a temporary one and why should it not be permanent, instead of building others in the same area?

Mr. TEAGUE. Is it fireproof, General?

Dr. HAWLEY. No; it is a wooden hospital. It is one that is strictly temporary.

Mr. PRICE. A temporary Army hospital, built during the war? Dr. HAWLEY. Yes.

Mr. ALLEN. Let me say again that some of these temporary hospitals are not fit for veterans' hospitals and ought not to be taken over and made permanent hospitals because it would result in having to rebuild the whole establishment.

I do not know anything about this in particular but I think the fact ought to be brought out that this is a temporary frame hospital that was thrown up during the war and is not a permanent veterans' hospital.

Mr. MITCHELL. Will the gentleman yield, please?

General Hawley, is the construction of this hospital the same construction as the one at Clinton, Iowa- the Schick Hospital? Dr. HAWLEY. No; it is all frame.

Mr. MITCHELL. I think you referred to the Schick Hospital as a temporary hospital, too.

Dr. HAWLEY. It is semipermanent.

Mr. MITCHELL. Semipermanent?

Dr. HAWLEY. I think that is the official War Department classification.

Mr. MITCHELL. That is a long way from semipermanent, if you ask me. That is about as permanent as this building.

Mr. CROW. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RANKIN. General, I remember we had one of these frame buildings in California 20 years ago, and there was a terrific amount of uneasiness for fear that fire would sweep it and burn up the veterans, and my recollection is that they did away with it, or rebuilt it, out of permanent materials.

Now, it is probably cheaper-I do not know the facts in this casebut it is probably cheaper to go ahead and build the veterans' hospital-cheaper in the long run to build a veterans' hospital at Americus-than it would be to maintain this temporary, inefficient firetrap, we will call it, at Thomasville, that was constructed for temporary use by the Army.

Mr. WHEELER. General, how many beds do you propose to have in the hospital at Tallahassee? Do you remember offhand?

Dr. HAWLEY. 200.

Mr. WHEELER. 200 beds at Tallahassee and 200 at Americus?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir; Americus will be for tuberculosis.

Mr. WHEELER. That will be tuberculosis.

The one at Tallahassee will be more or less the same type as the one at Thomasville?

Dr. HAWLEY. It will be for general medicine and surgery.

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Mr. WHEELER. In other words, you are closing 1,500 beds and building a new one with 200 beds?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. WHEELER. What I am trying to do is to be able to answer questions that are directed at me and I am still unable to answer them.

Dr. HAWLEY. I understand.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. General, while we are on this question of temporary versus permanent hospitals, I had several conferences with you back in January, February, March, and probably April, as regards the waiting list of Oklahoma veterans. I told you at that time that the American Legion and the VFW told me we had a waiting list of 677, a proportion of which, a large proportion of which, were service-connected.

Now, your statements always were to me-and I questioned you once here in front of the committee-that the records furnished you by the Oklahoma hospitals were to the effect that there were no service-connected or emergency cases on the waiting list.

At the time you were telling me that, the veterans' hospital at Muskogee was calling up the service officers of the American Legion and the VFW, telling them not to send any more veterans to them; that they could not take care of them.

One week after you testified here before the committee, we had a veteran who presented himself to the Muskogee veterans' hospital for admission as an emergency case, and he was denied admission as an emergency case, and as I said on the floor of the House, the only reason that made me doubt that was that he died 2 days later.

Now, naturally, there is not going to be a waiting list down there if the hospital calls up the VFW and the American Legion service officers and tells them to quit sending cases over there, service-connected or emergency cases; that they cannot handle them. Certainly your statistics would reflect that there are no waiting cases if the service officers of the Legion and VFW are called up and told not to present themselves, and that situation still exists down there.

Now, I had a conference with you when we were trying to get you to keep open the Norman General Hospital. You sent Colonel Brown to Oklahoma City under the theory that we were going to get an additional 200 beds at the hospital by moving out V. D. beds there. Now, that has fallen by the wayside.

Now, here is what I am trying to get at: I get tired of these glowing reports that there are no service-connected or emergency cases. think the public, from the information that comes out of your office, it seems to me, gets such a glowing report that everything is going all right, when I know down in my State that they are not. I just fairly well sympathize with the Appropriations Committee and everyone else, but if you are not going to come in here and tell us what you need-I know in my State, and I cannot speak for the rest of them-I know in my State, the State commander of the American Legion and the State commander of the VFW are not horsing me around when they say they have 677 cases waiting and yet we are not going to get anything done if your story is going to be that those cases are not waiting.

Concerning this man who had been denied admission at Muskogee, Okla.—and I have the name in my office of the captain who turned

him down, and he died the next day-I get tired of coming in here and everywhere else and hearing all these defenses put up that the American veteran is being well taken care of.

It sounds good. The American public is being sold a bill of goods that they are being taken care of and I know in my State they are not being taken care of.

You once told me that the Oklahoma City Hospital would be finished on December 31, 1947. Then you changed it in here and said, "I think it is going to be finished in 1950," and now I find that it is not even contracted for. The architect's plans are not drawn or anything else; and yet that was the argument that you put to me and the other Oklahoma Congressmen: That we do not need the temporary hospital at Norman, because one of these days we are going to have a general hospital with a thousand beds in Oklahoma City to take care of them.

The only way we can work these things out is if we have a true picture of what is going on, and if you do not know those things, you should check there down at Muskogee, Okla., and such places and find out if they told the service officers to quit sending those cases, and make them quit sending you reports up here that there are no service-connected or emergency cases waiting.

Do you know of this service veteran that was denied admission at Muskogee?

Dr. HAWLEY. Yes, I have forgotten the details and I make no attempt, of course, to defend an error in judgment. I can only say that it has happened a number of times that a man has walked out of a doctor's office after a complete physical examination for life insurance, or something like that, and dropped dead of a coronary after he gets out the door; but the fact that a person dies shortly after a medical examination means one of two things: Either that he was not examined carefully or that it was impossible in the light of present-day medical knowledge to detect something of a serious nature.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Let me ask you this:

As a layman, I would say this: If a veteran was brought into a hospital, unconscious, with blood all over him, to me as a layman that means that the fellow is in pretty bad shape.

Now, then, it also means to me this: If they did not have the bed to take care of him, they either had to make the ruling in there that he was not an emergency case or they could not take care of him. If they made the ruling that he was not an emergency case, they certainly were in error. If they made the ruling that they did not have the beds to take care of him, then that is the situation, and I want you to come in here and tell us what you need to take care of those cases down there. Now, that is an illustration.

What I am trying to point out is that there are many cases that go to the Muskogee Hospital and Will Rogers that are denied admission because they cannot take care of them.

In that case, the only reason that stands out is that the fellow died the next day. If they can go ahead and linger along a few years, they are not emergency cases.

Mr. KEARNEY. I think in order to expedite the questioning here, I am going to ask the committee to alternate.

Mr. Ramey, do you have any questions you want to ask the General? Mr. RAMEY. No; I have no further questions.