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PALO ALTO VA PLANS BIG EXPANSION -- Center to

rehabilitate the blind will be the largest in the VA system.

Artist's rendering of new Palo Alto VA.

For more about the Palo Alto VA facility, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=palo+alto&op=ph

Story here... http://www.paloalto
online.com/news/show_story.php?id=8796

Story below:

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VA plans big Palo Alto, Menlo Park expansion

Center to rehabilitate the blind will be largest in VA system

by Sue Dremann
Palo Alto Weekly Staff

A $750 million reconstruction project is underway at the Palo Alto campus Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

The Palo Alto projects will consolidate services that are currently scattered around the 93-acre Palo Alto campus and will also replace aging buildings weakened or damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, according to Jason Nietupski, facilities manager for the Palo Alto VA.

Additional projects are planned for the Menlo Park VA campus.

The Palo Alto work includes:

� A 375,000-square-foot ambulatory-care/research center;

� A 93,000-square-foot polytrauma rehabilitation center;

� A 64,000-square-foot Western Blind Rehabilitation Center;

� An 80-bed, 80,000-square-foot acute psychiatric inpatient facility;

� A 32,000-square-foot rehabilitation research and development bone-and-joint center;

� A 20,000-square-foot central plant and generator facilities; and

� A 600-stall parking structure and helipad.

A new emergency department opened July 14.

In addition, the Menlo Park campus will get a new 120-bed nursing home and a 23,000-square-foot engineering center to replace a warehouse. A 9,000-square-foot radiology center will break ground in the fall and will be capable of pulling up records from anywhere in the country, Nietupski said.

The Palo Alto center has seen a marked growth in its number of patients over the past decade.

"In 1997, we treated 24,051 patients; in 2007, that number hit 49,370. That's a 100-percent increase in the last 11 years," Nietupski said.

The VA Palo Alto Health Care System as a whole includes inpatient facilities at Palo Alto, Livermore and Menlo Park, though construction will be focused in Palo Alto.

The system — which also includes six outpatient clinics in San Jose, Capitola, Monterey, Stockton, Modesto and Sonora — treated 745,000 outpatients in 2007, up from 494,000 in 1997, according to Nietupski.

The Palo Alto projects are part of a nationwide upgrade of facilities serving veterans. In July 1999, a General Accounting Office (GAO) study found the Veterans Administration was diverting a million dollars a day — or $3.6 billion during a decade — from veterans' health care to maintain unneeded or unused facilities.

The average age of the VA's 4,900 buildings is more than 50 years, and the need to reduce vacant space and unneeded buildings has been the focus of several reports by the GAO.

"This approach to {facilities} management means the dollars once wasted on old and vacant buildings can be used to enhance services in the communities where health care is provided," according to a VA statement.

The two most costly components of the Palo Alto system's upgrade are the Centers for Ambulatory Care and Polytrauma and the Blind Center, according to Nietupski.

The ambulatory-care center will consolidate all outpatient care into one facility, including optometry, physical therapy and prosthetics, he said.

"The state-of-the-art polytrauma center will be on the level of a private hospital," he said.

Palo Alto is one of four facilities in the country that takes care of war-wounded veterans with brain trauma.

The blind center will be the largest in the VA system. One in three veterans with traumatic brain injuries has blindness, Nietupski said.

To streamline operations, some departments will be relocated. Administrative offices will be moved to the Jones Hall Army Reserve Center at 1776 Old Middlefield Way, Mountain View, according to Nietupski.

A "dry-lab" research facility — a national coordinating center with 900 scientists — will move from seismically deficient 1929 buildings in Menlo Park to a two-story office building at Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale.

The research operation is the third largest in the country, with studies on dementia, brain injury, mental health, infectious diseases and geriatrics, Nietupski said.

A guest house, the Hometel "Defender's Lodge," is also planned for the Palo Alto campus but would be funded by donations. Last year, 11,000 patients had to find temporary housing while they received care at the Palo Alto VA Hospital.

Many have to drive 50 miles from affordable housing while receiving treatment, according to the Pentagon Federal Credit Union Foundation. The foundation is trying to raise $13 million for the facility by December, to create 33 suites that can accommodate up to 66 people at a time, Nietupski said.

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posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

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