VA schedule slips again at North Las Vegas hospital
WASHINGTON — Completion of the veterans medical complex in North Las Vegas that already was years late and cost millions of dollars more than planned has been pushed back another six months or more, according to a new schedule from the Department of Veterans Affairs
The hospital’s emergency department that is being expanded after being built too small at the outset is set for activation in the spring of 2016, after being promised by this summer.
Likewise, the “community living center,” a rehabilitation and hospice facility in the medical complex at the 215 Beltway and North Pecos Road, also is being delayed, to the summer of 2016. The hospital administration building that was projected to open this spring now has been pushed to late summer.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., disclosed the delays Wednesday at a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, saying they were detailed in the latest construction update she received from the VA.
VA officials in Washington and a spokesman for the hospital could not immediately explain the schedule changes. Titus this week told VA Secretary Robert McDonald she worried that VA’s mammoth struggle to build a hospital outside Denver might be having an impact on finishing the one locally.
“There has not been a nexus drawn between pushing the timeline for Las Vegas and taking the funds for Aurora (Colo.), but I want to be assured that is not the case,” she said.
A VA spokesman said Thursday there is no connection between the Southern Nevada and Colorado efforts.
“There is no project going on right now (at the North Las Vegas site) that I am aware of that is in a stage early enough where you could cancel it, take the money and reappropriate that to Colorado,” spokesman Richard Beam said. “Most of our projects are mature. The contracts have already been awarded.
“We don’t perceive anything that could occur to impact Southern Nevada because of Colorado,” Beam said.
While much of the facility is in use, staff and patients at the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas have had to make do while final segments are built and readied for use.
Administrators now work out of the community living facility, limiting its capacity to 10 available beds for patients, with between five and eight beds in use daily.
When the administration building is complete, Beam said the capacity of the community living center will expand to 120 beds that could be allocated for a variety of uses such as long-term care, geriatric mental health or additional outpatient care
The emergency room also sees patients during reconstruction that is adding 14 beds to the 11 already part of the facility.
“There are some instances where some of these programs we are waiting for the space to finish construction, and there have been some staff we have not hired yet because we are not in the space,” Beam said.
It could not be immediately determined how many if any patients have been sent elsewhere in Las Vegas or out of town at the government’s expense for services not available at the complex.
The VA Medical Center originally was estimated to cost $325 million but will end up with a price tag of more than $585 million, an 80 percent increase, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.
The initial estimate was based on VA plans that were dramatically altered as the project got underway, the GAO said in a 2013 report.
The Southern Nevada complex originally was planned as an expanded clinic to be co-located with the O’Callaghan Federal Hospital at Nellis Air Force Base. But that plan was set aside when the VA determined it would not be adequate to serve the growing number of veterans retiring to Las Vegas.
The initial completion date was April 2009 for the 90-bed hospital and 120-bed community living center. It opened in August 2012 before it was fully built.
The apparent slippage in Southern Nevada also comes as the VA continues to struggle with the medical center project in Aurora, Colo., whose costs have ballooned to $1.73 billion. The agency has reprogrammed $57 million from construction reserves to continue the troubled project.
Furthermore, the VA is asking Congress for permission to draw about $830 million from a $5 billion fund created by lawmakers last year to improve services.
VA medical centers in Orlando, Fla., and New Orleans have been singled out by the GAO as being over budget and behind schedule.
At Wednesday’s hearing VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson apologized for the agency’s struggles to build medical centers in recent years. Gibson said the Nevada hospital was the first one the VA had built in 17 years, and it showed.
“The organization frankly had lost competency,” Gibson said. “The (construction) business had changed dramatically in the intervening years. So what happened was, we caught the bow wave of Las Vegas and Denver and New Orleans and Orlando, and we weren’t ready for it as an organization.”
Gibson told lawmakers construction of the Colorado hospital was being turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Titus said she was inclined to vote against additional money for the Colorado hospital.
“I’ve come to the conclusion this is a billion-dollar earmark … at the expense of veterans in Nevada and across the country,” Titus said. “Unless we know where the money is coming from and that it is not going to affect our veterans, I’m going to vote no.”
Contact Review-Journal Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@reviewjournal.com or 202-783-1760. Find him on Twitter: @STetreaultDC.
