VA recommends shutting hundreds of clinics, hospitals and building new facilities

Editor's Note

On March 14, the Biden administration released a recommendation via the US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to restructure the VA healthcare system, including closing over 150 clinics and hospitals and constructing several new facilities, Becker’s March 15 reports.

Citing information from the March 15 Washington Post article titled “VA reveals sweeping plan to shutter aging clinics, hospitals in favor of new facilities, retooled services,” Becker’s lists several takeaways from the restructure plan. Here are some highlights:

• The recommendation would see three VA medical centers, 86 community-based outpatient clinics, and 86 other outpatient services clinics close.
• It would also see the construction of 140 multispecialty community-based outpatient clinics, 48 inpatient partnerships, 27 standalone community living centers, 14 healthcare centers, 14 outpatient partnerships, and 12 standalone residential rehabilitation treatment programs.
• It would remove “aging hospitals with unused inpatient beds” but replace them “with inpatient and outpatient clinics nearby.”
• It would see some facilities that remained open “lose services like emergency care or surgeries” but “gain mental health or urgent-care clinics.”
• It would construct new nursing homes “in areas where veterans are moving, primarily in the South and Southwest.”

Many factors reportedly are behind the restructure plan, but the main push for this recommendation comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs spending “billions of dollars to maintain old facilities,” the article notes.