VA clinic here could open by March

Following the completion of a recent market survey, the Veterans Administration plans to open a new outreach clinic in Mountain Home by March.

According to Boise Veterans Administration Medical Center spokesman Josh Callihan, the state bureau continues to discuss whether to build a facility or lease space for the military veterans clinic within a three-mile radius of the Elmore County Medical Center.

Initially, the Mountain Home clinic will include five full-time VA employees, Callihan said. The planned clinic would accommodate primary care and mental health services as well as a home-based primary care unit capable of providing health care to veterans in their homes.

Plans to open a veteran's clinic in Mountain Home are part of the VA's continuing push to open regional clinics across southern Idaho. The Boise veterans medical center opened a similar clinic in Twin Falls about 10 years ago and put another in Caldwell three years ago. The medical center recently opened similar clinics in Salmon, Idaho, and Burns, Ore.

"The VA is in a mode of pushing care out to where the veterans are," said Grant Ragsdale, acting director of the Boise VA Medical Center, during a previous interview with the Mountain Home News. "It's not so much 'medical center-centric' anymore. We are trying to put care closer to the veterans' homes. It's a convenience and improved access issue."

The veterans clinic in Twin Falls, for example, sees between 2,200 to 2,400 patients per year needing initial and follow-up care.

"This is one of our priorities; to make health care more accessible for our veterans," said Sharon Clark, a spokesperson for the Boise-based VA center.

Funds to run these clinics comes from the Boise VA medical center's annual operating budget.

Mountain Home's veteran population, fueled by members retiring each year from the nearby base, put the city on the VA's list of towns needing these types of clinics. More than 7,100 retirees and their families live in Mountain Home and surrounding communities, according to an economic impact statement released by Mountain Home Air Force Base.

The Mountain Home clinic would function similar to a primary care clinic on base, providing diagnosis and treatment of routine illnesses and medical issues.

Once the clinic opens and staff members determine what veterans need, it's possible the VA could expand services in Mountain Home, according to Callihan. For example, the Caldwell clinic -- which saw the city rapidly grow in recent years -- looked to enlarge its clinic to meet the needs of its expanding military retiree population.

Individuals needing speciality, surgical or long-term medical care would likely continue using the Boise medical center, he said.

Opening clinics across southern Idaho and Mountain Home will help ease the strain on the Boise medical center.

"At the Boise VA, we take care of about 22,000 patients in a given fiscal year," Ragsdale said. "We have space constraints. We have parking constraints. So anything we can do to move the care off of this campus and closer to the veterans is seen as a positive for both us and the veterans."

The regional clinics remain "very popular" with the state's military retiree population, especially those who used to drive up to two hours to reach the nearest VA hospital, according to Ragsdale.

"They'd much prefer to get care in their own community," he added.

In addition, Ragsdale believes the new VA clinic here could also shoulder some of retiree health care burden currently carried by the base hospital here. It's required to give active duty military members and their families priority over military retirees when scheduling medical appointments.

If the initiative remains on schedule, the clinic could possibly open here in late February, according to Callihan.

For more information about eligibility requirements for VA services, people should contact the Boise VA regional office toll free at 1-800-827-1000.