Vets’ nursing home proposed for Northern Nevada

Monday, March 17, 2003 | 9:56 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Kenny Guinn has included $50,000 in the budget to study the need for a veterans nursing home in Northern Nevada, and state officials are looking at the Carson-Tahoe Hospital as a possible location.

Chuck Fulkerson, director of the state Veterans Services Office, said he and state Public Works Director Dan O'Brien met with officials of Carson-Tahoe Hospital about leasing space for a veterans home.

The hospital is going ahead with plans to build a new hospital but would keep the old building for auxiliary health care, Fulkerson told a Senate-Assembly budget committee Friday.

He said there were discussions that a 120-bed wing would be leased to the state in the old hospital, which would be remodeled to bring the wing up to federal and state standards for a veterans nursing home.

If the state wanted to build a new facility, Fulkerson said, it would go to the bottom of the list in seeking federal funds and it may take years to secure the money. Under the preliminary plan, the state would enter a month-to-month lease with the hospitals.

He said millions of dollars in construction costs would be saved. And the state would avoid the headaches it experienced in building the state's first veterans nursing home in Boulder City, he said.

He estimated there are 230,000 veterans in Nevada, with 180,000 of them in the Las Vegas area.