Federal officials vow to push for more Valley healthcare facilities for veterans

HARLINGEN - Federal officials expressed approval Thursday of a new veterans healthcare center here but said they are redoubling efforts to build an even larger facility for veterans in the Rio Grande Valley.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake, who took office in December, toured the South Texas VA Health Care Center, praising newly offered services such as mental health treatment, computerized tomography and podiatry.

The expanded clinic should reduce the need for veterans to travel to the nearest VA hospital - Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio - to seek care, they said.

"It was unacceptable for veterans to make a 500-mile (round) trip - five hours each way - to San Antonio for routine checkups," Hutchison said.

Now, lawmakers and VA officials want to expedite construction of a larger VA facility in the Valley that would offer outpatient surgery, cardiology, neurology and numerous other services, eliminating an estimated 95 percent of veterans' trips to San Antonio for healthcare.

Officials dedicated the new, $10 million VA clinic in December, saying the 34,000-square-foot facility represented only the first phase in a long-term expansion of the clinic. The final phase - a 158,000-square-foot outpatient surgery center - is targeted for completion by the end of 2010.

Additional phases of the expansion aren't yet funded.

VA officials have said they want to bring more services here as soon as possible.

That goal likely will be accomplished through contracts with local hospitals, said Timothy Shea, director of South Texas Veterans Health Care System, which oversees VA facilities here in the Valley.

Already, fewer veterans are traveling to San Antonio for care, he said. The addition of a CT scanner, for example, means about 600 veterans won't need to travel beyond the Valley for routine screening, he said.

VA officials also are considering a realignment of the department's South Texas services, grouping Laredo, Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley into their own regional healthcare system separate from the one they now share with San Antonio. That step might help ensure funding makes its way to the region more efficiently, said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

Although local veterans said they were grateful for the expanded veterans clinic, they still are pushing for a hospital.

"We are focused on seeing a veterans hospital in the Rio Grande Valley," said Felix Rodriguez, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars District 18, which oversees posts from Laredo to Brownsville. "We are committed to that still ... but we aren't looking a gift horse in the mouth."

Too many veterans still must wait months, or even years, to be seen by specialists in San Antonio - and then drive for hours to get there, Rodriguez said.

"We just want to make sure our veterans are tended to," he said. "We aren't going to wait for things to happen for us - we will make them happen."