Special meeting held Thursday in Fremont County to discuss possibility of opening VA clinic
FREMONT COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- This county has a growing population of military veterans who currently have to drive at least 30 miles to Pueblo or 45 miles to Colorado Springs for support services, and a more convenient option could be forthcoming.
Michael Kilmer, director of the Veterans Administration's Eastern Colorado Health Care System, attended a special meeting Thursday afternoon in Florence -- involving the city councils of Florence and nearby Cañon City, along with around 40 local veterans -- to discuss the need for and the possibility of opening a VA clinic.
"We've been discussing this for a year or so, and it's clear that the need and desire are there," Kilmer said. "There's an approval process that I'd need to go through. I'd need to submit a proposal up through my chain of command, and it's probably a year to two years out before we'd be able to open anything in this county."
Kilmer said that he expects to submit that proposal soon.
The VA said that there around 2,500 veterans in Fremont County who receive VA health services, but admitted there are hundreds more who could be getting care for other providers or not getting care at all because of a lack of convenient options.
"You have to consider that many of our veterans are elderly," said Florence Mayor Paul Villagrana, himself a Navy veteran. "It's not as easy for them to get up early and come home late from a trip to another clinic, especially in the dark or in bad weather. For some of them, it's a three-day trip and they need to find places to stay along the way. And then, appointments are often full. I started out going all the way to La Junta until I could get an appointment in Pueblo."
Kilmer said that if the VA approves a clinic, it would likely be in a leased existing building and be a scaled-down facility smaller than a VA hospital; for example it would offer mental health care but not radiology services.
"An existing building would allow us to set it up and open it sooner," he explained. "But there are challenges, one of which is being short 20 primary care providers. We're trying to pay them more but we also don't want to recruit from existing hospitals because that doesn't help the overall community.
Tim Jordan, a Marine veteran, said that the need for a local clinic has become apparent in the past five to seven years.
"It's because we have a growing, aging military population," he said. "I'm not in the VA system myself because I know there are people who need it more than I do."
This development comes despite a recent VA report that recommended closing VA clinics in some smaller communities across Colorado; however, Kilmer said that those closings will not happen in the near future.
"Burlington, Lamar, La Junta and Salida were recommended for their care to be transitioned to the community," he said. "But that recommendation didn't take COVID factors into account, so we're reassessing that."
Thursday's 90-minute meeting at Florence City Hall allowed officials to hear from citizens on the matter.
"Whether a clinic is in Florence or Cañon City doesn't matter," said Cañon City Councilman John Hamrick, an Army veteran. "Sometimes, these decisions are political but veterans do have a voice if for some reason a clinic isn't established here."
