Dr. Grady Paden said the high demand for a Veterans Affairs
outpatient clinic was clear back when a handful of nurses and doctors
worked out of a mobile trailer in the Skagit Valley Hospital parking
lot.
Paden, a VA physician who works primarily out of Seattle, said everyone
wanted to be seen at the shaky trailer in a parking lot once word got
out the Department of Veterans Affairs had established a mobile clinic
in Mount Vernon.
“Immediately people caught on, and we started getting drop-in patients,”
Paden said.
Paden said he knew the next appointment had arrived as soon as his
patient stepped onto the trailer.
“The whole trailer would rock,” Paden said. “I miss the trailer
actually.”
But the impromptu outpatient clinic outgrew the trailer, and then it
outgrew its temporary location at United General Hospital.
So Paden and a small army of military veterans gathered with Sen. Patty
Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, Thursday morning
to dedicate the new Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic
on the second and third floors of the Mount Vernon Medical Building.
Paden now sees his patients from Northwest Washington every couple weeks
at a fully staffed and equipped medical office.
The $1.6 million clinic sits just across the street from Skagit Valley
Hospital on North 13th Street. Veterans Affairs has already started
treating almost 3,000 people there, and expects to eventually have 6,500
patients from Northwest Washington transferred to the clinic. Before,
patients drove down to clinics in Seattle for treatment.
The clinic will pay an $800,000 lease each year for the space to the
Skagit Medical Building. The construction was paid for by Veterans
Affairs, with assistance from a 2007 appropriations bill that included
money for the outpatient center.
The facility works with five full- and part-time doctors, five nurses
and other support staff, but Nurse Manager Sue Passalacqua said the
facility will soon hire a psychologist, pharmacist and women’s health
specialist.
Passalacqua added that the outpatient clinic currently offers primary
care, but will eventually expand and offer dental and psychiatric care.
Jim Pace, an army veteran who served in Vietnam, said he and other
veterans had been working to get an outpatient clinic in Mount Vernon
since 1995.
Pace is the senior service officer for the Veterans Affairs office in
Bellingham. He said shifts in politics set the project back, but he and
others persisted.
“It was going to happen. I’m just disappointed in the time it took,”
Pace said. “We are very happy that this facility has been established.”
Passalacqua said the new facility is ideal for the clinic’s patient
population. The equipment caters to the elderly and disabled, with
larger chairs and beds in exam rooms and ceiling-mounted lifting devices
to help patients who are unable to get out of wheelchairs.
Passalacqua said the new facility is a far cry from the trailer she
worked in when she first came to the clinic.
“You can do medical anywhere,” Passalacqua said. “It’s just a matter of
now we have a more elaborate environment.”
Murray praised the timeliness of the dedication, exactly one year to the
day after the initial groundbreaking and right before a national
holiday.
“On the eve of the Fourth of July, what a great thing to be doing to say
‘thank you’ to all of our veterans,” Murray said.
– Skagit Valley Herald
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