New urgent care opens at PB VA

For the first time since its opening in 1951, the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center will open a new facility on the Poplar Bluff campus.

Construction on a new urgent care facility started in December 2017.

While it’s already in use, it officially will open Friday with a virtual ribbon cutting and tour on the VA’s Facebook page.

From left, Engineer Mike Wright, Chief Nurse of Specialty Services Bailey Wells and Chief of Environment and Care Ashley Lepold stand next to the bed in one of the new urgent care patient rooms.DAR/Michael Shine

The urgent care, which used to be a three-bed single room, now will include eight private rooms for patients and it’s own specific entrance and waiting room.

Planning for the facility started in 2015, and they allocated an $8 million budget to it.

“The cost of construction was pretty much on target,” Mike Wright, engineer, said.

The total capital spent, he said, was $9.5 million. Additional updates were added to the plan after construction started.

For instance, Wright said, the VA has an increasing focus on modernization, and this project allowed the opportunity to get the John. J. Pershing facility equipped for changes coming down the line, such as an upgraded system for medical records.

The old urgent care was about 1,300 square feet compared to the 9,800 in the new facility.

Along with the urgent care itself, the new space includes a desk and room for the VA police. The camera system also was upgraded.

Ashley Lepold, chief of environment and care, said with the old layout, patients would need to walk down the hall to a general waiting room and then back down the hall when they were admitted to the urgent care itself.

The room included three beds, with curtains between them, desks for three nurses and a doctor and a storage closet.

“The third one was not user friendly because it was so difficult to get back there when you have the other two beds here,” Bailey Wells, chief nurse of specialty services, said.

Under the new set up, urgent care patients have their own waiting room and check-in counter. The urgent care itself is shaped as a square with a nurse’s station in the middle.

It includes eight patient rooms — one women’s health, a mental crisis, an isolation and five general patient rooms. The urgent care is open 24/7 and typically sees 25-30 veterans a day, Wells said.

While the VA has been addressing those needs prior to the expansion, the dedicated space for it will be beneficial, Wells said.

Female veterans are one of the largest growing groups coming to the VA, Wells said.

Wells said the facility and dedicating a room to female veterans will hopefully help them see the VA is here for them.

“Historically, like when this building was built, you didn’t hear of many female veterans,” Wells said. “There’s definitely been a change generationally to see more females enroll.

“We are able to take care of them in a place that’s specifically designed to make them feel comfortable, but also to give them the specialized care they need.”

While the primary concern of infectious diseases is COVID-19, the isolation room would be able to account for any of them. It can be used for patients with COVID-like symptoms, but in the future would be used for any patients the staff is concerned could be contagious.

The isolation room has its own entrance, a decontamination shower, the ability to give negative pressure to avoid disease spread.

“It’s just a specialized isolation area that keeps the dirty air from going into the clean areas,” Wells said.

The old urgent care currently is used for COVID testing, they said. There isn’t a permanent plan for it yet, but it will be used for something.

“Whatever we do with it will require a complete overhaul of course, but we’re still I don’t think we’ve settled on a plan yet,” Wells said.