Las Vegas Business Press :: News : Bigger scope, bigger cost

Bigger scope, bigger cost

Veterans Affairs hospital now a $600 million project on track for 2011

BY TIM O'REILEY

As the new Veterans Affairs medical center has risen from the desert, so has its size and budget.

Called a $295 million project at the groundbreaking in October 2006, the medical center's price has now swollen to $600.4 million. In addition, the project will take two years longer to complete than the summer of 2009 time frame given when the center was unveiled four years ago.

Local Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman David Martinez said the center's role has expanded from that of a large-scale clinic to a more comprehensive treatment center. In the process, the acreage of the site has grown from 120 to 151 and the square footage of the buildings from 750,000 to more than 900,000.

COURTESY VETERANS AFFAIRS

However, the plans always included 90 acute-care hospital beds and 120 long-term nursing beds plus an adjacent Veterans Benefits Administration. Martinez could not delineate the components that led to the doubled budget or the two-year delay in the opening date to late 2011. John Bright, the director of the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System, was not available for comment.

As steel rises from the ground, the center stands in isolation at the juncture of the Las Vegas Beltway and Pecos Road. The nearest subdivisions of North Las Vegas stop about a half-mile to the south, with open territory extending in all other directions. The location was arranged through a no-cost land transfer from acreage controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Already, off-site utilities, access roads and a central power plant are finished, along with the foundation. The nursing home topped out at the end of July and the contract for the main building is scheduled for award later this month.

Besides the in-patient hospital care, the center will include beds for veterans in need of physical rehabilitation, or who suffer from Alzheimer's, mental disorders and terminal illness. By bringing together various treatment regimens and administrative support, the VA hopes to improve care.

In tandem with the center, the VA is in the process of leasing four satellite clinics spread around the Las Vegas area for both primary and mental health care, with two sites already secured and the other two to be signed by October.

Further, Martinez said the VA would continue a 15-year arrangement to use nearly half of the 114-bed Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital at Nellis Air Force Base.

The swelling population of Las Vegas-area veterans brought about the medical center. A federal advisory commission report in 2004 noted that 41,000 veterans had enrolled in the department's health care system, a number expected to grow by half to 63,000 in 2012. But the lack of facilities forced the VA, at its expense, to send about 1,500 people to Southern California for treatment.

The new medical center is designed to handle a broad swath of medical conditions, reducing the need to send veterans out of state.

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at toreiley@lvbusinesspress.com or 702-387-5290.

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