Plan urges $1b VA hospital in Hub

Officials have proposed a $1 billion facility, larger than Massachusetts General Hospital, that would replace VA medical centers in Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Brockton, and Bedford, according to an official with the Department of Veterans Affairs who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The facility, as proposed to the commission this fall, would include about 600 hospital beds and 475 nursing home beds and be in downtown Boston, the official said. Everett Alvarez Jr., chairman of the commission planning an overhaul of veterans health care, said that his 15-member panel was not ready to endorse a new hospital, but that it favored a feasibility study of consolidating inpatient services in a modern complex.

The four existing medical centers "were built for health care delivery 50 years ago," he said. "How much longer are we going to pour money into them?"

But Alvarez said the commission opposed eliminating inpatient services at the Bedford VA medical center, the region's largest, as VA officials proposed earlier this year. He said panel members had been convinced by local officials, veterans, and site visits that shutting the 40-building Bedford complex, which specializes in long-term care, "doesn't make sense," because it would disrupt nationally recognized programs for Alzheimer's patients, shift rehabilitation programs from an urban center, and require adding nursing home beds at other locations.

As part of a national effort to make the massive VA medical system more efficient, VA officials in Washington had proposed transforming the Bedford complex into an outpatient clinic and moving all the beds and the patients to other sites. Under the plan, 345 nursing home beds, including 100 serving Alzheimer's patients, would be shifted to Manchester, N.H.; Brockton; and private facilities.

Sixty-five acute- and long-term psychiatric beds would go to Brockton, along with an Alzheimer's research center and 40 rehabilitiation beds used to help veterans with psychiatric problems return to the community. Another 40 beds used to help train homeless veterans to return to the work force would be moved to Northampton in Western Massachusetts.

"The sense of the commission is that they do not favor moving [these programs] from Bedford," said Alvarez, a war hero and former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration.

The commission is scheduled to wrap up its work this month and present a comprehensive plan to VA secretary Anthony J. Principi. The effort is designed to shift more resources to outpatient care, reduce vacant space, and move resources to the South, where more veterans live.

Nationally, the initial plan called for closing seven hospitals, opening two new ones, and adding or subtracting specific programs at many others. Principi has said he will accept or reject the plan as a whole by the end of January. If he approves the overhaul, the plan would go to Congress for funding.

Pamela Worden, whose 75-year-old husband is treated

at Bedford's Alzheimer's unit, said she is encouraged by Alvarez's comments about Bedford. Worden, and other family members of veterans treated at Bedford have rallied support for the complex, holding protests and delivering 13,000 petitions to Washington. "I'm a little leery even of good news," she said, "because this has not been a completely open process. We really want to keep the pressure on until things are officially decided in favor of the patients at Bedford."

US Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat who learned of the news about Bedford from the Associated Press Thursday night, said the Massachusetts delegation had been fighting hard to save the facility. He called the possibilty of a new hospital in Eastern Massachusetts "an exciting prospect."

Asked whether he thought Congress would fund an overhaul that would cost billions nationally, Meehan said, "funding veterans health is particularly important with our troops around the world."

"It would be very difficult for the Congress to undo this process," he said.

The proposal for a new hospital in Boston was made less than five years after the government spent $28 million to improve the Jamaica Plain hospital and turn it into an outpatient center.

As proposed, the new hospital would take on all the needed functions from the other four medical centers, which would be closed or leased for other purposes.