Canandaigua VA to get $300M remake
The Canandaigua Veterans Affairs Medical Center was a campus full of ancient and sometimes vacant buildings 12 years ago, and the Department of Veterans Affairs almost shut it down.
Now, after years of community support and some major procedural changes, the VA is scheduled to begin construction on the first phase of a $309 million renovation project this fall — a product of a years-long national evaluation of VA infrastructure.
The Capital Assets for Realignment for Enhanced Services initiative, or CARES, started in 2000, and looked at more than 150 VA medical centers in the U.S. to assess where the department was losing money on inefficient infrastructure, said Canandaigua VA Executive Director Craig Howard.
The Canandaigua VA received an unfavorable CARES report and the department proposed closing it in 2003. An extensive grass-roots campaign in Canandaigua helped retain the medical center and address some of its infrastructure issues, and this two-phase expansion project was a recommendation that came out of that initiative, he said.
About half of the federal funding has come through for the project, which will update the center's long-term care centers and build a new center for outpatient services.
The center is currently a million square feet spread over 16 buildings — many of which are aging and are too small for the center's modern operations, said construction manager David Price.
Due to new standards at the VA about patient care, it was imperative that the Canandaigua center have a better system for outpatient health care, he said.
The new plan is to utilize teams of doctors and support staff called patient aligned care teams, or PACTs, that will offer highly personalized outpatient care that will focus on wellness and preventive care, said Howard.
"This really is a national initiative throughout VA, recognizing that there's a greater need to coordinate the care for each individual veteran," he said. "We don't want the veteran coming to the VA and have to make any more stops on the way to care."
The medical center has already implemented this model, and saw an improvement of access to the doctors at the center and its Rochester outpatient clinic in recent months, Howard said.
"The productivity of a physician is based in great part on their ability to swing from one space to another, so we don't have a bottleneck situation," he said, adding that the current outpatient facilities at the center don't have the space to make this possible.
Canandaigua's PACTs will be housed in the first phase of the VA's new construction, which will take the place of most of Building 2, as well as the courtyard space between Buildings 1 and 2 near the front entrance of the campus, Price said.
The building will feature clusters of rooms for doctors and other health staff to confer about patients' health care, which will ultimately improve efficiency and access, said Price.
The Canandaigua VA came under fire last year when records showed that the medical center's average wait times for new patients were some of the longest at VA hospitals across the country.
The department's wait time goal is two weeks. The most recent wait time report from the Canandaigua VA shows that about 98 percent of patients were seen in 30 days or less.
All outpatient services, such as dental or radiology, will be done in the VA's new facility — "If you're coming to see your doctor here, this is where you'll go," Price said.
Veteran Tim Thornton of Rochester works in Canandaigua and started visiting the VA medical center four years ago.
"If there was something negative to be said about anything there, I wouldn't even go," he said. "I'm very happy with the fact that no matter who the doctor is, they're excellent at talking to me about my general health."
Thornton said that when he does need to consult doctors in other areas of the state, the center employs video conferencing with doctors in Syracuse or Buffalo. If he has to wait more than 30 days for an appointment, the center will set up an appointment for him with a civilian doctor.
Construction on the new outpatient facility is scheduled to begin this fall, starting with upgrades to the campus utilities to support the new structure, said Price.
Several other buildings will be renovated on the inside, including Building 1, which will be redone to accommodate administrative and clinical operations.
The second phase of the project, which will go to Congress as part of the proposed 2016 fiscal year budget, includes the demolition of two VA buildings and construction of 10 "community living center" cottages and a new domiciliary, or short-term living facility.
Buildings 33 and 34 are being demolished to make way for the new cottages. The current long-term care facilities "are the worst buildings as far as infrastructure and maintainability," said Price. "There are patient rooms that don't even have bathrooms ... (residents) have to share bathrooms at the end of the hall."
The cottages will have private rooms and shared kitchen and recreational areas, Price said, adding that he's hoping the complex will feel "like a small housing development."
"You talk about taking care of people in the place where they live," Price said. "This'll be a huge improvement and bring us into the 21st century with regard to long-term care."
The project faced a lot of hurdles over years of design and planning, but it's one that will ultimately increase the level of care at the Canandaigua VA and save money on maintenance in the long run, said Howard.
"I find it so incredible that the stars would line up in our favor and allow us to take care of upstate vets," he said.
STADDEO@DemocratandChronicle.com