<p>After an eight-month doctor shortage that led to a deluge of complaints, Winn Army Community Hospital is finally well on the road to recovery.</p><p>"We're starting to rebuild our basic health care machinery here," said Col. Scott Goodrich, commander of the hospital at the sprawling Army post near Savannah. "We've had to work very hard to dig ourselves out, and I think we're just about there."</p><p>Combat deployments, new assignments and competition from the private sector made the hospital staff of 41 civilian and uniformed doctors begin to dwindle last summer.</p><p>At its low point, the hospital was short 16 physicians, Goodrich said. As of the beginning of the month, the hospital was down five. Two hires were on the way, though two Army doctors are about to leave for Iraq.</p><p>"When providers leave and you can't get them back, the demand increases and the stress on the entire organization increases," Goodrich said. "We were understaffed for such a long period of time, cracks started to show in morale and in the willingness to work as a team no matter the cost."</p><p>Patients were also unhappy. In March, patient complaints skyrocketed to 616, about four times the normal level. Three out of four of them were about access to care and appointment delays, said Linda King, the hospital's patient representative.</p><p>Earlier this year, Sharon Konvicka, a mother of three whose husband is serving his third tour in Iraq, tried to schedule a family therapy session to deal with her husband's 15-month deployment. The hospital's behavioral health clinic told her appointments were backed up for some eight months.</p><p>"It would be nice to have a family meeting, just so we don't turn into a flaming basket case while he's gone," she said. "But I don't think anyone is calling to cancel those appointments these days, so we're just relying on each other and opening new lines of communication."</p><p>At Fort Stewart, the hospital has struggled to keep up with the population increase as soldiers and their families move there from closed or reorganized bases. The budget is also not keeping pace with the service demands, Goodrich said.</p><p>These problems are widespread among the 36 medical facilities that the Army operates worldwide. Last year, nearly half of them failed to meet Pentagon standards for providing a doctor within seven days for routine care, said U.S. Army Medical Command spokeswoman Margaret Tippy.</p><p>Still, that was an improvement over past years, and since 2005, 84 percent of routine care was provided within the limit across the Army, Tippy said.</p><p>Winn and other Army hospitals also have to compete for doctors with civilian hospitals, which can often offer higher salaries and quicker hiring processes.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2ded148)</p>
