Va Hospitals

Despite recently announced plans to tear down the quake-damaged Sepulveda Veterans Administration hospital, Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) will push for construction of a 50-bed mini-hospital on the site, a spokesman said Wednesday. McKeon, who represents the district in which the hospital is located, hopes to meet with VA Secretary Jesse Brown soon to urge that some in-patient capacity be retained after the 431-bed hospital is demolished.

FBI agents were investigating the beating death of an Encino man whose body was found early Thursday in a laundry area of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Westwood, where he was employed as an electrician. The Los Angeles Coroner's Office identified the victim as Donald P. Wegner, 52. The FBI gave no other information, declining comment on a possible motive or suspects.

The Veterans Administration Medical Center in Westwood is not moving fast enough to expand its care and housing for homeless veterans despite the fact that more than new 30 beds for that purpose have remained empty for two months, an advocacy group for the homeless charged Thursday. Acknowledging a "communications breakdown" with homeless veterans, VA officials have begun to rewrite admission standards, but insisted that beds had stayed empty because veterans either had not sought them or were ineligible.

While withholding final judgment, a Veterans Affairs physicist said in a new report Friday that controversial radiation tests conducted on research patients at a Loma Linda hospital "appear to be in line" with standard medical practices. But the preliminary report, sought by the San Bernardino County veterans hospital to quell criticism of the research, acknowledged that consent forms signed by participants made no mention of any radiological dangers under the discussion of potential risks.

The Veterans Affairs Department has initiated disciplinary proceedings against two senior medical officials at one of its large hospitals outside Chicago and suspended virtually all surgery there after an inspection raised questions about the deaths of several patients. What prompted the action by VA Secretary Edward J.

A man carrying a shotgun ran into a Veterans Administration hospital clinic in Jackson, Miss., and fatally shot his doctor with one blast before killing himself with another. The gunman, Victor L. Bowles, was a 48-year-old Vietnam War veteran who had worked briefly at the hospital as a janitor in the 1970s and had been treated for physical and mental problems at the center for years. Dr. Ralph Carter, 46, died while undergoing emergency surgery for a shotgun blast to the chest.

It seemed incredible when a New York company proposed to take on a massive asbestos-removing project at the Veterans Administration hospital in Long Beach for just $155,000, a little more than half of what most other firms proposed for the potentially deadly job. But American Combustion and Industrial Service Corp. had all the credentials. The company resume listed an impressive record of industrial projects, most of them on the East Coast, many for similar asbestos-removal jobs.

The West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center is among 10 VA medical centers that will be honored for conducting the best controlled study of anti-epileptic drugs in 1985. Local officials have been invited to attend awards ceremonies scheduled Sept. 9 in Jerusalem by the Commission on Anti-Epileptic Drugs and the International League against Epilepsy. Dr. David M.

A former nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital was charged with second-degree murder in the death of a patient. James Mullins, 56, was charged in the death of Gary Baker, 53. He is accused of injecting him with propofol, a strong sedative that can slow or stop respiration. Baker, of West Palm Beach, had checked into the hospital Feb. 5 with back pain. He went into a coma Feb. 10 and died 12 days later.

A bomb scare-- over what proved to be a kitchen timer-- led to the evacuation of about 50 patients and employees of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Los Angeles early Sunday, as authorities detonated the timer, which had been left outside the emergency room by a person who ran from the building. Sheriff's investigators used a robot to place the timer in a trash container at a nearby parking lot before detonating it about 2:30 a.m., Deputy Rich Erickson said.