A San Diego-area veterans' hospital is facing a shortage of surgeons, nurses and staff that has created a backlog of as many as 500 patients waiting for orthopedic surgery.
Patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in La Jolla are waiting up to 18 months for elective, non-emergency operations like joint-replacement surgery.
Hospital officials say the facility is taking steps to address the problem including increasing operating room hours and transferring elective surgeries to other facilities.
A hospital executive says the goal is to reduce waits to six months by the end of this year.
Waits have increased since 2004, when the V-A began granting service personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan automatic eligibility into the V-A health care system.
