The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Move paying off for veterans’ services
VA clinic’s new home in Willoughby allows more services to be offered
The former Painesville VA Clinic has a new location and new name and a new location.
The former Painesville VA Clinic has a new location and new name.
It is now called the Lake County Community Based Outpatient Clinic and it’s new location is at 35000 Kaiser Court in Willoughby.
The deciding factor for the relocation, according to facility director Tara Wallace, was due to the previous location being in two separate buildings and the clinic basically outgrowing that location.
Sarah Phillips, public relations for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said it also came down to contracting.
“These are not spaces that the VA owns. We lease them,” Phillips said. “So, every so many years the lease comes up for renewal and Painesville didn’t actually extend an offer for a new location and we decided that we needed more space and this one fit all the criteria,” Phillips said of the new Willoughby location.
The move into a larger building makes it possible for the clinic to add additional services.
Physical therapy is one of the new services they now offer and the radiology department, which is under construction currently, will allow them to do x-rays onsite instead of sending patients out. The radiology is department is anticipated to be completed in January.
The clinic currently offers primary care, a dietitian, mental health service, optometry, a sleep clinic, podiatry, and Telehealth, which allows them to see patients by video calls.
The clinic currently treats approximately 7,000 veterans. The new facility allows not only for the expansion of space and additional services but will also allow personnel to increase the amount of patients they treat.
They are also expecting to increase the size of the staff. The clinic currently has 52 staff members. All the employees from the Painesville locations transferred to the Willoughby location, according to Phillips.
Wallace and Phillips believe the new location is beneficial to the veteran patients they serve in multiple ways.
“For one, we are all in the same location so they don’t have to get lost going back and forth, and the new services that we offer is an added bonus,” Wallace said.
The clinic set-up is more conducive to the PACT (Patient Aligned Care Team model utilize by health professionals at the clinic.
Wallace described the PACT model as having one provider, one registered nurse, one licensed practical nurse and a clerk. The four of them work together for every patient.
The team is centralized in one location instead of everybody being in separate offices so that everyone is getting care to the veteran patient during their visit.
In the past, the patient would be placed in one room and moved to another room and have to shuffle around, according to Phillips.
“Where as here everyone revolves around the patient and they have a more centralized area where the staff all work as one,” Phillips said.
“This avoids the patient being moved around,” said Tammy Stennis, the facility director. “Instead of the patient being moved around the team goes to the patient while the patient stays in the same room.”
Another new feature offered at the Willoughby location is the optometry shop.
Patients will no longer have to go to the Cleveland location to pick out and pick up glasses. The clinic currently has one optometrist on-site but just hired a second one.
There are also two pharmacists on-site to who can work with patients on diabetic or other medication needs.
According to Stennis, most of the primary care physicians at the clinic are also women’s health care specialist because females are quickly becoming the fastest growing veteran population.
The facility has a full-service mental health staff onsite which includes psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical nurse specialists and social workers, according to Wallace.
“So the VA actually takes a more holistic approach than what you will find in most private sector health care models,” Phillips said. “In the private sector you go in for a bad knee, they are going to look at a bad knee. But, when you come to the VA, automatically every veteran is going to see a mental health provider as well as their physician regardless of whether they came in for that or not. “
“That’s because we want to be sure we are not just taking care of the knee but that we are doing preventative measures as well taking care of the entire body and that includes the mind,” she said.
Phillips said the new building also sets the clinic up well for the future.
“This location, with the extra space and with the extra services will allow for us to expand and grow because our veteran population is growing as well,” Phillips said. “So we really just want to give them the best support in their medical care.”
Another new feature offered at the Willoughby location is the optometry shop.