VA’s Women’s Health Center celebrating first anniversary

Retired Navy veteran Sheila Tuttle calls it a life saver.

Mari Skinner, a third generation Navy veteran, says its quality of care coupled with cutting-edge equipment is unmatched at any Veterans Affairs facility where she’s been treated.

And, Dr. Charu D. Gupta, medical director of women’s health for the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System, describes the 10,000-square-foot Women’s Health Center on the third floor of the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas as the best she’s worked in of more than a dozen medical facilities.

“You come to one place and we take care of you in minimal time,” Gupta said Monday, on the eve of the 1-year anniversary of the $2 million Women’s Health Center’s opening.

On Tuesday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the VA Medical Center, 6900 N. Pecos Road, in North Las Vegas, the staff and volunteers at the Women’s Health Center will celebrate the anniversary with an open house in hopes of recruiting more of Nevada’s women who served to sign up for care.

Tuttle, a retired Navy chief who served from 1977 to 1997 — including tours in operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield — credits the Women’s Health Center with “saving my foot, my back, my health.”

“This center not only saved my life several times but made it easy for me to get health care,” she said.

Until the center and its eight neighborhood clinics opened, “we had never had a place for women veterans to go.”

Skinner, too, lauded the way the staff operates the center and ensures that special needs for gynecology, breast cancer and psychological issues are handled with speed and efficiency.

“It’s very private,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been taken care of better than any VA facility I’ve been to.”

The Women’s Health Center features a state-of-the-art mammography tool for taking high-resolution, three-dimensional “tomosynthesis” images to detect breast cancer.

That’s in addition to 10 private examination rooms, two rooms for performing procedures, and a “telehealth” service facility where outside experts in genetics, ophthalmology, dermatology and other fields geared to women’s health can connect with women veterans locally for examinations via data links without them having to travel to out-of-state facilities.

Procedure rooms come with a special, $13,000 camera, or “colposcope,” that allows a doctor to take a close-up look at cervical pre-cancerous cells.

Mental health experts are available at the center for advice on dealing with military sexual trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological issues.

The number of women veterans enrolled for health care in Southern Nevada has doubled from 3,000 in 2008 to 6,000 this year, or 10 percent of the some 60,000 veterans who have signed up to receive medical care in the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System.

Women Veterans Program Manager Carol Simenson notes that the 6,000 currently enrolled represent only one-third of roughly 18,000 who reside in the coverage area for the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System.

Gupta said the goal is to reach all of the local women who served and need care for issues ranging from breast and cervical cancer screenings to menopause and maternity care.

Her message to them: “You don’t have to suffer in silence. There is hope, and we can help.”

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.