Outpatient demand swells VA campus

COURTESY PROVIDENCE VA MEDICAL CENTER
ADDING ON: An addition under construction at the Providence VA Medical Center. The new wing will house a mental-health clinic and specialty labs.
COURTESY PROVIDENCE VA MEDICAL CENTER ADDING ON: An addition under construction at the Providence VA Medical Center. The new wing will house a mental-health clinic and specialty labs.

Four years ago, the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center recorded 306,000 outpatient visits. A year ago, that number zoomed to 354,000.
The swell in outpatient treatment has led to a corresponding boom in construction at the medical complex. Within the last few years workers have built surgical and MRI suites and installed new medical-imaging machines. Contractors are now in the midst of projects to construct a four-story addition to the main hospital building and upgrade the complex’s power systems.
In the $13.4 million addition, two floors covering 10,000 square feet will become specialty clinics hosting branches of medicine, such as dermatology. The other two floors will offer about 12,000 square feet for the hospital’s mental-health programs now squeezed into an outbuilding. Some of the mental-health services will remain in the standalone building and some will relocate to roomier quarters in the addition.
“They are just so desperate for space because the program has grown recently and they are bursting at the seams,” said Michael Haire, a project section supervisor for the VA.
Demand for the mental-health services comes as the military cares for soldiers returning from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The clinic runs programs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and more.
But it is not recently returned soldiers who are generating demand for outpatient services at the medical center. Spokesman Thomas Antonaccio said that like VA centers across the country, the Providence center is coping with an aging population of men and women who served in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. In addition, medical treatment has improved and allowed for fewer inpatient stays but generated huge demand for clinics. And 21st-century technology requires more space for machines and labs. The center is also attempting to expand its reach. Antonaccio said about 40 percent of veterans in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts receive treatment through the VA’s Providence division. VA officials want to boost that number and modern facilities may entice veterans to pick the Providence hospital.
The VA will spend $6.5 million to construct modern specialty clinics and another $6.9 million for the mental-health clinic. Construction on both projects is expected to finish in May, with occupancy occurring in the summer, Haire said. The addition is among the largest projects undertaken by the agency in Providence in the last decade. (The new surgical suite, with a price tag of about $7 million, has been the priciest.) Out of sight, the VA will spend $5 million to upgrade the electrical-distribution system on the campus.
To orchestrate the projects, the VA tapped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With an influx of patients and money, the national VA leadership reached an agreement with the Army Corps to oversee projects if local officials requested assistance.
Providence officials took the Army Corps up on the agreement and reached out to the agency’s New England region office.
“It gives the VA staff time to deal with other projects that are going on,” Haire said.
The Army Corps handled the contracting for the three projects and awarded all of them to Providence-based Gilbane Building Co.
For Gilbane, the project comes as construction remains light during an economic downturn. Gilbane Rhode Island District Manager John Sinnott said that just a few years ago Gilbane could rattle off Rhode Island projects with price tags of more than $100 million. Today, the VA project represents one of its most expensive contracts in the state.
The project is putting about five Gilbane employees to work and creating jobs for about 45 people working for subcontractors, Sinnott said. Company officials also hope for more work at the Providence medical complex. VA officials anticipate putting up for bid a contract to construct a new emergency room and an intensive-care unit next year. Elsewhere in the country, the VA is looking to upgrade and replace aging facilities.
“It is an important project for us because when you’re dealing with the VA it’s a federal market, which reaches all across the country,” Sinnott said.
Gilbane already has a relationship with the VA. The company built an addition and undertook renovation work at the Providence center a few years ago. It is wrapping up a hospital construction project at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, which will assume some of the patients handled by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center that closed this year.
For the Providence project, Gilbane partnered with Cannon Design of New York and Watermark Engineering of Lowell, Mass. to submit a bid for the design-build contract. Under the contract, Gilbane oversaw both the design of the addition and its construction.
Sinnott said the construction company also offered suggestions as part of its bid and contract. For example, Gilbane suggested a more-efficient way to route power wires and redesigned and replaced existing electrical switchgear at no additional cost.
The company also had to undertake construction without shutting down the busy hospital complex. So construction occurred during less-busy hours and Gilbane put controls in place to control dust.
Workers constructed temporary offices to house displaced employees and Gilbane managers spent hours coordinating with VA officials’ schedules and when to turn off utilities.
“People who come to work every day, they don’t want to find surprises,” Sinnott said. &#8226

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