Planned VA clinic in Garner will reduce drive time for veterans seeking medical care
Thousands of veterans in Wake, Johnston and other nearby counties will no longer need to drive to Durham for outpatient medical care from the Department of Veterans Affairs when the VA opens a new clinic in Garner.
Construction of the new clinic, near the corner of Rand Road and N.C. 50, is expected to begin early next year and take until late 2023 or early 2024 to complete.
The Garner clinic will offer primary care and mental health services as well as an array of outpatient procedures, including CT and MRI scans, that veterans from Wake and Johnston now get at the main VA hospital in Durham, said Paul Crews, executive director of the Durham VA Health Care System.
Crews said 30% of the veterans served by the Durham VA live in Wake. He said the VA decided to locate the clinic in Garner to make its medical services more convenient for the growing number of vets in southern Wake and adjoining Johnston County, which by 2025 is expected to have a larger veteran population than Durham County.
“We’re trying to space things out across our market,” Crews said. “A large number of our veterans are aging, and it’s going to be more and more difficult for them to travel long distances.”
About 200,000 veterans live in a 27-county area served by the Durham VA Health Care System, stretching from Durham to the coast. In addition to the main hospital near the Duke University campus, the Durham VA oversees 10 other medical facilities, including a clinic in Morehead City and a 185,000-square-foot center in Greenville that offers many of the services that will be available in Garner.
The 245,000-square-foot Garner clinic will be the second largest medical facility in the Durham VA system. When it opens, two smaller clinics in Raleigh, near WakeMed and off Hammond Road, will likely close, Crews said.
Three other facilities in Wake — a clinic on Atlantic Avenue in North Raleigh and a dialysis center and a rehab clinic for the blind, both at Brier Creek — will probably remain open, he said, as will a clinic the VA recently opened in Clayton.
Atriax/PPGG JV, a veteran-owned business based in Hickory, will acquire the 17-acre site adjacent to Rand Road Elementary School and build the Garner clinic. The VA will lease space in the new building.
When the Durham VA opened in the 1950s, the federal agency’s approach was to put everything under one roof, Crews said. In the case of the Durham VA, where the hospital is located at one end of a comet-shaped service area, it meant veterans had to drive a fair distance for services.
Even as the VA establishes more clinics in more areas, veterans needing treatment that requires an overnight stay in the hospital will still need to come to Durham. Crews said the VA is trying to make that experience a little easier by adding three stories to its parking garage, which are set to open in January.
“That’s what people complain about the most coming to Durham,” he said. “The parking.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
