Danville and Alamo representatives weighed in via a live television feed at a meeting last week to discuss the future of the VA nursing home in Livermore. It was the second in a series of “stakeholder” meetings sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs that will result in a recommendation to VA Secretary R. James Nicholson as to where to put aging and infirm veterans once the Livermore nursing home has been demolished.
The 112-acre Livermore site currently has a 120-bed nursing home and a medical center that was built as a tuberculosis hospital in 1949 but retrofitted in 1992. VA plans call for the hospital to be closed with services offered at two new clinics, one in the East Bay and another in the Central Valley. Specialty services for local veterans as well as short-term hospital stays would be at the Palo Alto facility. Livermore is part of the VA Palo Alto Health Care system.
In March, U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo (R., 11th) spoke at a Veterans Forum at the Danville Veterans Memorial Hall and said he would do everything he could to keep the VA hospital in Livermore up and running. “Right now there is demand and need here,” he said. “Moving that hospital would cause hardships on the veterans who live in this area.”
Danville and Alamo residents largely go to Martinez or San Francisco for their care although they may choose to go to Livermore, said Karen Pridmore of the VA Public Affairs Department. “There are nursing homes in Martinez and in Livermore,” she said. “Veterans in the whole Bay Area can be treated in any facility.”
The panel convened in Livermore by the VA last week considered five “options.” One was renovation of the existing 23-year-old nursing home. At the first meeting in May, many who testified literally begged the panel to “just leave (the existing home) alone.”
Partway into last week’s meeting, Pombo appeared via a live television feed, spoke briefly, and, although he said he’d been given a copy of the options, expressed no opinion as to which he favored.
Shortly after, U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D., 10th) also appeared via TV. Veterans present erupted in hoots, whistles and cheers when Tauscher called the meetings “a precipitous waste of our time.” She said no one could give her cost estimates for construction of a new nursing home, but said her own projection was $8 million-$9 million. There’s no guarantee, she said, that Congress would approve the funding. Tauscher firmly supports upgrading the present nursing home, but that option – even though panel chairman Alan Perry identified it as the least expensive and the “sentimental favorite” – is no longer on the table.
Panel member state Assemblyman Guy Houston (R., 15th) was not present. He also missed the first meeting, citing scheduling conflicts.
It was clear from the outset of Wednesday’s meeting that panel members were convinced Nicholson would reject a recommendation to further the option of keeping the nursing home open. It didn’t “conform” to and wouldn’t “be compliant” with then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi’s decision last year that requires construction of a new nursing home. Its location is to be determined by such factors as ease of access.
In a surprise development at the conclusion of Wednesday’s meeting, panel member Dr. Ellen Shibata proposed an option not previously considered. She recommended for further study an option that would build – somewhere on the current campus – both a new 120-bed nursing home and a “co-located” clinic. She said that, as a clinician, she considers such “co-location” essential for optimum care. By a vote of 3-2, the panel approved forwarding that option to the secretary for his consideration. The option is one of several being sent to Nicholson that the panel is recommending for further study. The others call for building a new nursing home elsewhere, possibly the Central Valley.
Panel chairman Perry pointed out that Nicholson is under no obligation to accept the panel’s recommendations. He also pointed out that no construction will begin until 2012.
Perry and others said it was their understanding any proceeds from redevelopment would be funneled back into health services for veterans, such as, suggested one panel member, the money necessary to build both a nursing home and clinic in the current rural setting in Livermore.
Veteran Rose Wilson has called that setting “home” for the past four years. She recounts a fall a year ago that fractured her hip. Now, she said, she’s walking. “The atmosphere here had a lot to do with it,” she noted. “You’re feeling down and you go outside and see the deer a-runnin’ and a-jumpin’ – it lifts you up. I think it would be very hard to equal the life here.”
Be heard
The third of four planned stakeholder’s meetings is tentatively scheduled for sometime in December. To e-mail comments to the VA, visit www.va.gov/cares/LocationSite/Site13.asp?VASite=13. Written comments are given equal weight with oral testimony.
