"U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Alexandria, said Friday that Charlottesville has been selected as the site for a new community-based outpatient health clinic for veterans in Virginia.

The clinic is scheduled to open in 2008 and will provide comprehensive primary care, health promotion and mental health services.

No site in Charlottesville has been selected for the clinic yet, Warner said.

“We’re very proud to have gotten one of these clinics,” Warner said in a telephone interview while he was en route from Washington to deliver a commencement address at Woodberry Forest School in Madison County.

“We have a very heavy veterans population” in Virginia, one of 22 or fewer states to receive such a clinic, Warner said. “It’s approaching 700,000.”

“It’s quite a nice thing to have in the Charlottesville area,” Warner said.

He said that he and Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson selected Virginia as one of the states to receive a clinic for veterans and the proposed location of Charlottesville.

The parent facility would be the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond.

John Ullyot, Warner’s director of communications, provided a few details of the proposed Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic that Warner said has not yet been officially announced.

“The exact number of staff and the dollar amount to be spent by the VA are yet to be determined,” Ullyot said. “There’s a lot more information to come.”

He said the outpatient clinics “are under the aegis of full VA medical centers and so veterans don’t have to travel as far for health care. … Sometimes they build a new facility and sometimes it’s more appropriate if they lease.”

Outpatient mental health services will include medication management, substance abuse treatment and counseling, individual and group counseling and evaluation and therapy, the Department of Veterans Affairs said in a document provided by Ullyot.

The clinic is being established to improve veterans’ health care and greatly reduce drive times, according to the document.

“Improved quality of care will reduce waiting times for follow-up care, in addition to improving waiting times at the parent hospital,” the document states. “The community-based outpatient clinic will be serving patients in medically underserved areas.”

The outpatient clinic will provide what the VA termed “comprehensive primary care, health promotion, maintenance and education.”

“It is anticipated that 1,478 existing patients and 221 new patients will be treated” initially each year at the clinic in Charlottesville, the document stated." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 26, 2007)