
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993                   TAG: 9312070129
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VA TO GET BEDSIDE PHONES

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem has become one of only two VA hospitals in the VA's eastern region to have bedside telephones for patients.

C&P Telephone Co., AT&T, Pioneers of America - a service organization of phone company employees - and Communication Workers of America have donated equipment, materials and labor to provide a service that VA patients in Salem have been without since the hospital opened in 1934.

The phones were donated by AT&T and the Pioneers. Materials such as wiring, connecting blocks, tools and trucks were provided by C&P.

CWA members and volunteers are donating time on weekends to install phones. Saturday, they swept through the VA's year-old clinical addition, installing 105 phones. They will return in coming weekends to install 176 more on other patient units.

The VA only had to provide "switching," the mechanism that makes phones operable. The VA's central office in Washington provided funding for it, said Laura Miller, associate director. There won't be any additional local costs or fees, she said.

"Most people don't realize that under our appropriated funds, we're not able to provide bedside phones in patients' rooms," Miller said. "We had pay phones at the end of the hall. This is very, very helpful to our patients and to staff in providing the care we'd like to provide for patients."

Don Reid, C&P area manager, said the idea stemmed from a project that originated at the VA medical center in Albany, N.Y.

"A [phone company] employee and union member had a friend at that VA hospital who was suffering from a long-term illness," Reid said. "In the final weeks of his life, he had difficulty having access to a telephone. He came upon the idea of providing telephones to the VA hospital at no charge, at least no charge in provision of the telephone itself."

C&P in Roanoke adapted the project - called "P.T., Phone Home". ("P.T." is a VA abbreviation for "patient.")

Materials alone have an estimated value of $5,000, Reid said.

by CNB