Jordan Hunkin, 36, a former Marine who served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, tried to seek help at the Malcom Randall Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville.
There, the staff involuntarily committed Hunkin under the terms of Florida’s Baker Act, which allows patients to be institutionalized against their will for 72 hours if deemed a threat to others or themselves.
Hunkin never returned to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) after he was released. Six months later, he killed himself.
What are they trying to hide?
It’s not all that surprising, eerily enough: The University of South Florida found that “Medicaid enrollees who have had a Baker Act examination in the past year are three times more likely to die by suicide than enrollees with no examination.”
Apparently, being Baker Acted is one of the deadliest things that can happen to you.
According to the annual Baker Act report for fiscal year 2023 to 2024, there were 407 veterans Baker Acted in Florida, including 104 at the VA’s West Palm Beach facility, 48 at the VA’s Orlando facility and 255 at the VA’s Bay Pines facility.
How many more from the hospitals that don’t report?
Nobody knows—they don’t keep or release records.
During the investigation into Hunkin’s improper handling, it emerged that, out of Florida’s eight major VA hospitals, only three properly report to the state when they examine and institutionalize veterans involuntarily.
The question, of course, is: why? Exactly why would VA hospitals in the Sunshine State decline to report the number of veterans involuntarily institutionalized?
What are they trying to hide?
Could it be, for example, that the VA doesn’t want to admit how many suffering veterans they are failing to help?
Perhaps they don’t want it known how many Baker Acted veterans go on to kill themselves?
Or are they treating America’s veterans—our heroes—as a cash crop, to fill up beds and justify demands for increased funding?
“Why don’t they have to report it?” Hunkin’s mother, Beverly, demanded. “They’re still dealing with human beings! What are they hiding?”
The Malcolm Randall VA Hospital that Baker Acted Hunkin said in a prepared statement about Hunkin’s death: “Preventing veteran suicide is our highest priority, and we take this responsibility with the utmost seriousness. The entire North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System is devastated by this tragedy and, from the moment it occurred, we’ve sought to understand what took place so that it never happens again. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the veteran’s family and loved ones.”
Well, that’s all very nice. But Hunkin is still dead.
“I’m unable to say if it’s a systemic issue.”
“Staff admitted [Hunkin] under involuntary status despite the patient’s request for voluntary admission,” the VA Inspector General’s Office wrote, acknowledging that “staff incorrectly applied the involuntary inpatient Baker Act examination hold criteria.”
“The patient was assessed as alert, without hallucinations or delusions and without impairment of insight or judgment,” and “was calm and cooperative with good eye contact,” they added.
In other words, there was no earthly reason to incarcerate Hunkin under the Baker Act.
But they did it anyway.
Why?
How often is this happening?
“I’m unable to say if it’s a systemic issue,” Susan Tostenrude, manager of VA hotline inspections, said. “I can say it could be.”
Florida isn’t the only state that allows for involuntary institutionalization of one kind or another—all 50 do.
“The VA has over 170 medical centers and we looked at this one,” Tostenrude said.
Right. They looked into only this one.
The VA needs to conduct a full investigation, not merely in Florida, but nationwide, in every major hospital they have.
They may discover vast fraud or mistreatment of veterans, or they may discover nothing. But we owe it to our veterans—our heroes—and to our taxpayers to find out.
Especially after what happened to Jordan Hunkin.
