Berkley makes plea for LV vets hospital

Monday, Sept. 29, 2003 | 11:17 a.m.

If the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in operation are mostly empty, they should be shut down and the money that is used to fund them should be rerouted to build a full-service veterans hospital in Las Vegas.

That's what Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., told a VA committee considering streamlining the veterans health care system when it met Friday in Las Vegas as part of its 40-city fact-finding mission.

"Some cities have 50,000 veterans and say they have only two (veterans) hospitals, but I have 200,000 veterans and have no (veterans) hospital," Berkley told the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services committee during an impassioned 20-minute speech.

"Bring us that hospital we desperately need."

Berkley told the four members of the 16-member committee who made the trip to Las Vegas that they will be under "tremendous political pressure" to keep older, underused East Coast VA hospitals open.

She urged the fact-finders to overcome that pressure and recommend a full-service VA hospital for Las Vegas to Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, who has visited Las Vegas and is aware of its VA clinic woes.

The Addeliar D. Guy III VA Ambulatory Care Clinic closed in June. The $16 million center, which opened in 1997 on Martin Luther King Boulevard, was in disrepair, and services are now spread out among 15 temporary locations.

The VA has signed three-year leases with the satellite sites -- a plan that has come under criticism from some veterans, a number of whom must go to two or three sites for treatment of multiple health problems.

Last year the Guy clinic treated 35,400 patients. Currently, 41,000 veterans are enrolled for health care in Southern Nevada, and 38,000 will receive treatment at a VA clinic this year, local VA officials said.

Outside the hearing Berkley said her speech was filled with passion because "this is a very important committee" that has the ear of the VA secretary. Its findings, she said, could hammer home the need for a VA hospital here.

She further clarified that the East Coast clinics that should be closed are those in areas where there is another VA hospital nearby and services can be merged into one operation. She did not give specifics on which hospitals in which cities should be closed so that the funds could be diverted to Nevada.

Earlier this month Berkley introduced legislation in the House to authorize the funding of $250 million to build a new VA hospital with an outpatient clinic and a long-term care facility in Southern Nevada on a yet-to-be identified 50-acre site.

The proposed facility would have 81 hospital beds and 120 nursing home beds to serve the nation's fastest growing veterans population. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

Reid, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., also sent comments of support for the committee to include in its record. A letter from Gov. Kenny Guinn supporting the cause for a local clinic also was read into the record.

"Many VA hospitals are antiquated," said Jo Ann Webb, director of federal relations for the American Organization of Nurse Executives and a committee member who served as chairwoman for Friday's meeting. "New, modern facilities are needed."

The committee, which already has gathered more than 10,000 comments on the VA system, will make recommendations to Principi, including how $4.6 billion in new facilities will be built while reducing underused space.

Committee Vice Chairman Raymond John Vogel warned a panel of local veterans officials who also spoke at Friday's meeting that Southern Nevada likely will not get both a replacement VA clinic and a full-service hospital.

"The congresswoman spoke eloquently of the need, but it could take five years" to build a full-service VA hospital, Vogel said, noting a replacement clinic could be up and running in three years.

Kenneth Clark, regional director of the Veterans Integral Service Network that includes California and Nevada, said local officials realize it is "an either- or proposition" and that the goal now is to get the full-service hospital.

Admitting that while the current satellite clinic situation is not ideal, Clark said, "we'll make it work" until a VA hospital can be built.