The new VA Medical Center in Aurora is seeing more than 600 patients at the facility today. It’s a huge change from the old facility, which was built back in 1948 on East 9th Avenue east of Colorado Blvd. in Denver
The new VA hospital is located in Aurora and is a little over one-million square feet. It’s nearly double the size of the old hospital. Some services will still be offered at the location on East 9th Ave. after they were left out of the new facility when spending spun out of control.
The $1.7 billion hospital made it through nearly a decade of management blunders, legal battles, federal investigations and angry congressional hearings.
Many new services are to be offered at the new facility. Until now, Colorado veterans who required inpatient care for spinal cord injuries had to travel to Albuquerque or Chicago. The new center’s spinal clinic puts an end to the travel.
The new hospital is offering mammograms and PET scans for the first time.
Inpatient beds will increase to 148, which is only about 19-more beds than the old hospital. The VA plans to eventually move its PTSD residential rehabilitation program from the old hospital to the new facility to better serve its mental health patients.
It’s been a problem plagued project from the start and there’s still an issue with enough staffing, but the VA says the new facility will better serve our vets here in Colorado.
