Chronic crowding at Memphis VA hospital

Chronic crowding in the emergency department of the Memphis Veterans Affairs hospital led to some patients waiting up to 14 hours to be admitted or transferred to another hospital, according to a new inspection report released Wednesday from the VA Inspector General. The inspector general visited the hospital's emergency department in February after getting a complaint about long wait times, shortage of beds and unresponsiveness from the management. The VA hospital in Memphis serves veterans in West Tennessee and parts of Mississippi and Arkansas. Its emergency department has 22 beds and had more than 30,000 visits to the ER in the last fiscal year. But the Inspector General found that chronic crowding led to excessive wait times at the emergency room.