“The Medical Department of the Navy has been able to work with the Veterans’ Bureau along the following lines:
_First_: the turning over to the Public Health Service for the care of the Veterans of the World War of the Naval hospitals at Philadelphia, Pa., Cape May, N.J., Gulfport, Miss., and New Orleans, La. and quite recently to the Veterans’ Bureau itself of the hospital at Fort Lyon, Colo. used for tuberculosis patients. These institutions were completely equipped when transferred, so that no additional expense was involved. The hospital for tuberculous patients at Fort Lyon has been operated by naval personnel since November first, but this institution will be taken over by the Public Health Service on March 1st. With the great reduction in naval personnel and the discharge from the service of large numbers of the tuberculous, the needs of the Navy did not seem to justify the maintenance by the Navy of so large a hospital, there being at present 735 beds with possibilities of expansion. Upon his return from a recent inspection the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service expressed to me his admiration for the institution. We should not have been able to turn over this hospital had it not been for the generous offer of the Surgeon General of the Army to take care of the naval tuberculous at the Fitzsimmons General Hospital at Denver. The bed capacity of these five hospitals totaled 2229.
_Second_: The caring for the veteran patients in the same hospitals in which the sick of the Navy are being treated. In assigning accommodations to the patients of the Veterans’ Bureau there are many problem which complicate this matter. Manifestly it is necessary for the Navy to be prepared to receive the patients from its own personnel, and when it is considered that the fleet may at one time be in the port of New York and sending its sick to the New York Hospital during such time and then sail away for another port to then transfer its sick to another hospital the difficulties are apparent. If we could divide the ships between different ports and their sick between different hospitals the matter would be easy of adjustment.
Again we have only a limited number of beds in our three hospitals on the Pacific Coast and at the present time a large fleet is based on this station so that we are unable to offer accommodations in those hospitals to the Veterans’ Bureau and at the same time make adequate provision for the naval sick.