Major health care center in east Charlotte
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
By: Jim Morrill

Myrick announces facility that local veterans call much-needed. Current clinic is overcrowded.

The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to build a major new health care center in Charlotte by 2013, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick announced Friday.

The VA proposal calls for a 295,000-square-foot center for primary care and outpatient services. The agency currently operates a 55,000-square-foot clinic in east Charlotte.

No location has been determined. Cost figures were not available Friday. The proposed budget has to be approved by Congress.

A similar center is planned for Winston-Salem and a VA clinic in Hickory is being expanded. The closest VA hospital is in Salisbury.

“That's the whole point of these community-based clinics,” said VA spokeswoman Carol Waters. “The whole concept is to bring health care to veterans where they live.”

The Salisbury hospital is expected to see a record 70,000 patients this fiscal year.

More than 140,000 veterans live in the Charlotte metropolitan area, about 60,000 in Mecklenburg County alone, according to Howard Blackwelder, president of the Charlotte Metro Area Blind Veterans Association.

He said vets will be pleased to know about the proposed health center in Charlotte because the current one, which opened last August at 8601 University East Drive, is already overcrowded.

“They're complaining now about the one that's out there; when it opened, it was obsolete,” said Blackwelder, who gets some medical care there. “Twenty thousand (patients) a year is all they can take care of. The veterans are complaining because they're not getting the service that they thought they were going to get …

“They're so small here (in Charlotte) that they don't have the doctors to take care of (everything). They have to send you to where they have the doctors.”

Blackwelder said he has to travel soon to the VA Medical Center in Asheville to have the functioning of his carotid artery tested. “They don't have the facilities here to do that.”

The new center the size of more than five football fields promises more services.

Among other things, it will offer veterans primary care, mental health and specialty care services.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/852116.html