New building helps VA and UF

The Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center was starting to show its age.

Built in the 1960s, the hospital is part of the largest regional VA health system in the country. The North Florida/South Georgia VA Health System had 128,000 unique patients last year, and the growing number has created some problems. Wait times in the emergency room are too long and there are not enough beds, especially for patients in need of psychiatric services, said Bradley Bender, M.D., chief of staff for the health system.

“The current building is really antiquated,” Bender said. “We have four or five patient wards with a single toilet for five people. And it’s not unusual for us to send out three to five psychiatric patients a day that we cannot accommodate in our facility. That is an expense to us, and the service is fragmented.”

To address these needs, the VA is building a new 245,000-square-foot bed tower next to the existing facility on Archer Road. The new space will feature an expanded emergency room and 226 private bedrooms with bathrooms and space for families, including 15 additional beds for psychiatric patients.

The new building and updated equipment will further improve patient care, of course, and it also will benefit the UF faculty, residents and students who work and train there.

For example, more space equals more patients. To handle the increase, the VA is adding new slots for medical residents. Beginning in July 2011, the medical center will take up to 24 additional residents in psychiatry, surgery, anesthesiology, neurology, dermatology, pathology and radiology, Bender says.

“This is a great training environment for students, residents and fellows,” Bender said. “Some of the patients at Shands are too complicated (for students to handle). There is more bread and butter medicine at the VA.”

With connections to all six Health Science Center colleges, the VA actually has more ties to UF than some may realize. About 100 College of Medicine faculty members work at the VA and every medical student rotates through the medical center, as do most students in the College of Nursing and students from the colleges of Pharmacy and Dentistry. Several College of Nursing faculty members work there in its VA Nursing Academy and College of Public Health and Health Professions researchers work in the VA’s thriving rehabilitation research programs. The VA even has a veterinary medicine program, Bender said.

“The VA is a key strategic partner for the College of Medicine and the HSC,” said College of Medicine Dean Michael L. Good, M.D., who served as chief of staff for the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System prior to Bender. “Both organizations share the same core missions: patient care, education and research. We work together to help each other achieve excellence in all three areas.”

Another benefit of the VA-UF partnership is the VA’s ability to acquire advanced diagnostic and therapeutic equipment and its longtime use of electronic medical records, Good said.

“They have the premier electronic medical record, and that has been a great educational tool for our students to be involved in that,” said Maxine Hinze, Ph.D., R.N., chair of the College of Nursing department of adult and elderly nursing and co-director of the UF VA Nursing Academy.

The partnership with UF helps the VA, too, Bender says. Its affiliation with UF allows the VA get better quality physicians and helps the VA attract new health professionals who train there as students and decide to spend their careers there.

“It’s like a marriage,” Bender said. “We both make each other better.”