Promising talks between medical center and VA officials
By Donna Horowitz ,STAFF WRITER

Saturday, July 20, 2002 - Alameda County Medical Center officials may have found the savior they're looking for to help rebuild the outdated Fairmont Skilled Nursing Facility: the federal government.

Ken Cohen, chief executive officer of the medical center, has been meeting with a representative of the Veterans Affairs to discuss a joint venture to build a new nursing home and outpatient clinic at the San Leandro hospital.

Cohen said although talks are in the early stages, he considers them promising.

"It would be a great way to get a facility for the community," Cohen said. "We share the costs. It's a great match.... Philosophically, we think it's worth pursuing."

Cohen said no details have been worked out yet about how a shared project would work or be financed. But he said he has the support of county supervisors Alice Lai-Bitker, Keith Carson and Nate Miley to continue the discussions.

The 109-bed nursing facility was threatened with closure earlier this year because of medical center budget problems.

Although any such closure has been staved off for now, medical center officials believe the facility, as well as the rest of the hospital, ultimately will have to be rebuilt to meet current standards.

The medical center's facilities manager previously estimated it would cost $19 million to rebuild the hospital.

The medical center serves the county's indigent and uninsured at its three hospitals: Highland Hospital in Oakland, Fairmont Hospital and John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro, and four free-standing outpatient clinics.

Larry Janes, director of planning for the VA Northern California Health Care System and the VA San Francisco Medical Center at Mare Island, said he has met twice with the medical center. A third meeting is scheduled for next week.

But he said the federal government has made no commitment to the medical center.

"Right now we're in the exploring-options stage," Janes said. "We're also looking at other hospitals in the East Bay. We've also looked at Alameda Point. Another option is a commercial lease."

He said the Veterans Affairs currently operates two outpatient facilities in Oakland -- the main clinic at 2221 Martin Luther King Way and a mental health clinic on the Oakland Army Base.

He said the lease will expire at the Martin Luther King clinic in several years, so his agency is trying to plan ahead.

"We'd like to combine the clinic and the mental health clinic into one clinic. We're also doing a demographic analysis seeing if there's a need for a long-term facility," Janes added.

He said the Martin Luther King clinic is well-used. It saw about 7,000 patients last year. Both clinics handled a total of 66,000 outpatient visits in 2001.

Janes said he hopes to have a decision within a year, or two years at the latest, on which way to proceed.

Ken Burke, the county's veterans services officer, called the prospect of shared medical facilities a great idea.

"I've seen this type of thing work out really well," he said. "In Santa Rosa, they have a VA clinic co-located with a (community) hospital."

Mark Chandler, chairman of the Veterans Services Subcommittee of the Alameda County Veterans Commission, also supports a joint Veterans Affairs-medical center project.

He said a more centrally located clinic would better serve the county's veterans who are concentrated in East Oakland, Alameda, San Leandro, parts of Berkeley and Hayward.

In all, the county has an estimated 100,000 veterans.

Chandler, who lives in Alameda, favors use of the former Alameda Naval Air Station (now Alameda Point), although "I'm open to anywhere that would be practical."

But he hopes a consolidated facility will better reach veterans, especially the 33 percent who are homeless.