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By 2008, goodbye Biloxi: Super clinic brings military care home
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By Michael Stewart
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Pensacola News Journal, February 22nd, 2007
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Holley-Navarre resident Kenneth Laskowski has a Purple Heart from Vietnam, shrapnel in his neck and a three-hour drive to Biloxi whenever he needs medical treatment.
No one could be happier that an outpatient veterans' super clinic will open on U.S. 98, next to the Pensacola Naval Hospital, in April or May of next year after three years of construction.
"This is going to be the best thing since sliced bread for us," said Laskowski, 57, who has been waiting seven months for doctors at the VA Hospital in Biloxi to schedule an X-ray of his neck. "There is something wrong with my leg, and they think it might have something to do with the metal in my neck."
On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, toured the facility, which has been under construction since spring 2005. Navy Capt. Chuck Harris, administrator at the Naval Hospital, and Dr. Kenneth Andrews, an assistant chief of staff for the VA, accompanied him.
Miller inserted language into a 2003 bill to authorize $45 million for the super clinic. The total estimated cost today is $55 million.
He liked what he saw.
The old outpatient VA clinic on U.S. 29 is inadequate for an area with one of the largest concentrations of veterans in the nation, he said.
"This should solve that problem for years to come," Miller said.
U.S. Navy Lt. Joseph A. Mastrangelo, a health facilities and planning officer assigned to the project, said roughly 52 percent of the veterans who visit the Biloxi Veterans Affairs Hospital reside between Mobile and Panama City.
When completed, the super clinic will be one of the largest in the nation with two floors and 205,000 square feet of medical space, including 60 primary-care exam rooms.
Wednesday, crews were working inside the rough shell of a building. It has outside exterior walls and metal studs, plumbing and electrical fittings inside.
The super clinic is a joint project between the U.S. Department of the Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Harris and Andrews called the partnership a "win-win situation" because more services than either could offer alone will be available.
Veterans and active-duty Navy personnel will be able to use services at both the hospital and the super clinic. The Navy clinic at Corry Station that treats active military will move into the super clinic, as will the Deployment Health Center located at Navy Hospital.
The VA and the Navy also will operate a joint dental clinic and a physical medicine and rehabilitation clinic at the facility.
Numerous services not available at the existing clinic will be offered. They include minor surgery, women's care and mental-health treatment.
Beulah resident Frank Chestnut, a construction worker on the project, approached Miller and thanked him for his role in sponsoring the clinic.
"My brother is 100 percent disabled and lives eight minutes from here," Chestnut said. "He is a Vietnam vet with prostrate cancer and has to go to Biloxi for treatment. He can't wait for this to open."
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