New Charlotte VA center will expand veterans health care in region

Charlotte’s new Veterans Affairs Health Care Center won’t open officially for more than six months. But contractors and VA officials led a tour for local news outlets Thursday, offering an early look inside the five-story building that has changed the landscape along Tyvola Road west of Interstate 77.

The brick-and-glass health center, on a 35-acre site at West Tyvola Road and Cascade Pointe Boulevard, will be one of the largest in the country and will give veterans the ability to get most of their care “all in one place,” said Kenneth Mortimer, the health center’s new director. “It’s really a nice, central location.”

Construction of the $104 million outpatient center is expected to be finished by early winter, according to Ken Cornell of J. E. Dunn Construction Co., based in Kansas. The VA will then take over, adding furniture and equipment before accepting the first veteran patients in April.

“We have had massive growth in the number of veterans we serve in the Charlotte area,” said Mortimer. “This is a great opportunity to expand our reach.”

Mortimer, who previously worked at the VA’s central office in Washington, said the new building “looks like a hospital,” but it’s not. Veterans should not plan to go there for emergency care or for more serious illnesses that require hospitalization.

The closest VA hospital is the W.G. (Bill) Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury. But the VA does operate another outpatient clinic in Charlotte, at 8601 University East Drive.

The new Charlotte VA health center has 295,000 square feet for clinical use and will have the capacity to serve about 40,000 veterans annually, whereas the University-area clinic, with 67,000 square feet, served about 26,000 in 2014.

The Charlotte site is one of seven new VA health centers approved by Congress in 2010. The Salisbury hospital region is one of the fastest growing in the country, said VA spokesman Barthalomew Major. An estimated 140,000 veterans live in the Charlotte metropolitan area, about 60,000 in Mecklenburg County alone.

Although the number of veterans nationwide is declining, the number of veterans enrolled in the VA health-care system in increasing, Major said. Over the past 10 years, the number of VA patients nationwide has increased by 23 percent, but in the Salisbury region, the increase has been 66 percent, he said.

Some services to be offered at the new health center – such as kidney dialysis, physical therapy and MRI testing – have not been available at the University-area center, which will continue to operate on a “scaled down” basis, Mortimer said.

About 43 of the 250 employees at the University-area clinic will remain there and the rest will be transferred to the new health center. Veterans will continue to get primary care at the University-area clinic, but those who need specialty care will be referred to the new center, which will have a maximum of 700 employees, depending on funding and demand, Major said.

During Thursday’s tour, visitors wore hard hats, safety goggles and orange vests as they stepped over electrical cords and around ladders, hanging wires and garbage bins. Construction workers continued painting, measuring and cutting. Most of the ceiling tiles have not yet been installed, leaving overhead pipes, ducts and wires exposed.

“Watch your step,” more than one worker cautioned as visitors walked by.

Outside, the building is impressive, brown brick punctuated by a semi-circular tower of glass in the corner of the “L” shape, where the main entrance will be. A portion of the parking lot is already paved, but there’s still plenty of dirt to keep the earth-movers busy. A few of the building’s windows are missing, temporarily covered with plywood.

The two-story entrance is filled with natural light and will have multiple kiosks where veterans can check in electronically. The first floor will have radiology services, the dialysis unit, the pharmacy and a canteen for refreshments. The fifth floor will house operating rooms. And the middle floors will house clinics for primary care, dentistry, optometry, audiology and mental health. Those areas will be named based on themes – parks on the second floor, lakes on the third, and mountains on the fourth.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” said Mortimer, surveying the site. But he’s excited about the improvements it will offer veterans.

When the new center opens, patients who need every-other-day kidney dialysis will be ushered into a spacious, light-filled room. Today, the closest dialysis unit operated by the VA is in Asheville, he said. Having two MRI scanners at the new health center will be more convenient for veterans who now must go to non-VA centers or travel to Salisbury.

Major said veterans should not wait for the health center to open before enrolling for care at explore.va.gov. Eligibility is based on several criteria, including a veteran’s income and whether there is a service-connected injury. Veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are not required to have service-connected injuries to qualify, but they must apply within five years of discharge from active duty.

Even if veterans have previously applied for VA benefits, Major said they should apply again because circumstances or guidelines may have changed. “We’re here to provide the benefits that they’ve earned and deserve,” he said.

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 6:07 PM with the headline "New Charlotte VA center will expand veterans health care in region."