VA Plans Clinic, Nursing Home for San Joaquin Valley
The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to build a nursing home and outpatient specialty clinic in the Northern San Joaquin Valley as part of a national initiative to provide medical services closer to veterans' residences, the Modesto Bee reports.
U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson's plan calls for closing a VA facility in Livermore and developing a continuing care retirement community with assisted living, rehabilitation and other services. Nicholson said the nursing home will share a site with an outpatient specialty clinic that already was promised to the region.
Kerri Childress, spokesperson for the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, said that changes at the Livermore campus will not occur until new facilities are built in the Central Valley and East Bay in 2015 at the earliest.
Childress said the Palo Alto health system has put in a request to expand primary care clinics for veterans in Modesto and Stockton.
Under the expansion plan, the clinics will add pharmacy and radiology services within the next year, according to Childress (Carlson, Modesto Bee, 9/29).