Printer Friendly Page
PANEL RECOMMENDS NEW VA HOSPITAL IN LEXINGTON,
KENTUCKY -- Local advisory group for CARES
Commission wants new facility.
Story here...
http://www.kentucky.com/
mld/kentucky/16599754.htm
Story below:
---------------
Panel recommends new VA hospital in Lexington
By Barbara Isaacs
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
The local advisory panel considering options to revamp the Leestown Road
Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus on Thursday recommended that the
VA build a new hospital on the southeastern portion of the campus.
The final decision will be made by U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Secretary R. James Nicholson, but the local panel has held four meetings
to consider options about what should be done at Leestown. It's all been
part of the VA's national CARES initiative, which stands for Capital
Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services.
More than 30 veterans and other interested community members attended
the meeting.
The idea is to reduce the amount of vacant and underused space on the
Leestown VA campus and to consolidate services to use the space more
efficiently.
Lexington's Don Dixon, 70, a Marine Corps veteran who attended the
meeting, said he particularly favored the option the panel selected.
"We need new facilities," he said, adding that the option "gives us what
we want, quicker."
The six panelists, including veterans and veterans advocates, said their
consensus was that the option they selected would give veterans
state-of-the-art new buildings with the least amount of disruption of
care. Among the benefits of the new hospital complex would be larger
patient rooms, private nursing home rooms, private bathrooms in all
patient rooms, wider hallways, wider entryways to patient rooms for
easier wheelchair access, additional treatment and therapy spaces. and
improved parking.
The main part of the current campus would be vacated, and all buildings
and land would be available for reuse.
The plan calls for the new hospital complex to be about 250,000 square
feet sitting on 47 acres, most of which is now vacant. If funding is
appropriated for it, construction could begin in 2009, and it could
potentially be completed by 2018.
During recent months, the panel has helped winnow a long list of
potential plans to several. The other two that were considered Thursday:
• Build new clinical care facilities and renovate administrative
buildings on the central area of the campus. New clinical buildings in
this plan would have similar benefits as in the option above. But it had
the drawbacks of taking about 41/2 years longer to complete
construction, with significant disruption to patients during lengthy
construction.
• Renovate several buildings to accommodate increased outpatient
treatment and renovate the nursing home and mental health treatment
facilities. That option would be the most costly.
To read the panel's report, go to
www.va.gov/cares/documents/Lexington
_2007_01_23_Stage%20II%20
Preliminary%20Report.pdf.
---------------
Larry Scott --
