Vets, providers energized by relocation of clinic
Veterans and doctors wel-comed visitors to tour spa-cious offices and patient rooms of the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health-care System Imperial Valley clinic on Friday.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony officially marked the clinic’s re-opening after a relocation change to 1115 S. Fourth St. from its pri-or address on South Imperial Av-enue, even though it has seen pa-tients since February. Dr. Robert Smith, director of the VASDHS noted at nearly 9,800 square feet this clinic is three times larger.
“Patients will be very im-pressed with clinic services (nephrology, dermatology and gastrointestinal),” said Smith. “We’re very optimistic about our ability to expand care. The VAS-DHS executive team will stay in close communication with visits and conference calls and our goal is consistent and continuous service.”
Although now serving 1,500 veterans, Dr. Smith noted it was only 20 percent of the nearly 8,000 in Imperial County. He noted that many veterans do have additional health care op-tions yet VASDHS aims to be the provider of choice for them.
Also attending the ceremony, Dr. Timothy Dresselhaus, chief of primary care service for VAS-DHS, remarked he was delighted to see the state-of-the-art facility. “It’s appropriate for the service we want to establish here,” he said. “Here, you’ll have primary care, health and wellness pro-motion, management of current conditions and team care in-cluding physicians, nurses, social work and mental health.”
Marveling at the enlarged facility, Dr. Luzviminda Saidro, medical director remarked it is a lot better than the prior address. “Lots of veterans didn’t know we had a clinic here but actually we have vets from Riverside, San Diego and Yuma,” she said. “And we’re even in process of hiring new RNs, LVNs and medical as-sistants.”
But perhaps what staff are most excited about is the clinical video telehealth technology. It is a computer with video camera mounted to the monitor and patents sit in front or the screen while software (similar to Skype) can take images of internal or-gans for a doctor who is in San Diego. “It’s a head-to-toe as-sessment that saves the patients the trouble of traveling to San Diego,” said Lorena Arroyo, telehealth technologist. “It performs a physical exam similar to what occurs in a clinical setting.”
Arroyo also showed off a telerentinal machine that takes images of patients with eye complications owing to diabetes. “The vets are grateful for the high-end tech and we’ll be expanding telehealth tools as we add more specialty care,” she said.
Already acquainted with the former VASDHS Imperial Avenue office, N. O. Benavidez, president of the Korean War Veterans Association was making his first visit to the relocated facility he declared, fantastic.
“I was really flabbergasted at the size of this clinic,” said Benavidez. “There have been problems across the country with vets receiving health services, but we vets in Imperial Valley are pleased the VA has expanded medical services here.”
Also a patient at the former clinic address was veteran Stan Armstrong, former Parks and Recreation director for the city of Imperial. Armstrong echoed others about the larger facility. “It’s nice to see they have space to do their job,” said Armstrong. “They’ve always treated me well here. I had a flesh-eating virus on my arm. But I used the telehealth and that was great.”