VA hospital needed in Southern Nevada

The six-story, 1 million-square-foot hospital, hub of a 151-acre campus, will accept its first patients for limited services next Tuesday. Other services, including surgery, rehabilitation, extended care and geriatrics, will open gradually, and are expected to be operational by the end of December.

For about a decade, 2,000 veterans per year had to travel to VA facilities in Southern California for some care and procedures. The VA sets Nevada’s veteran population at more than 234,000, with most of those living within the Southern Nevada service area, which includes Nye and Lincoln counties.

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller spoke of “the veterans who made sacrifices to defend our freedom and spread liberty and freedom throughout the world,” noting that Nevada veterans “will no longer be forced to add out-of-state travel to their list of hardships.” Rep. Shelley Berkley added that she “always knew this day would come. It seemed to have taken a lot longer than any of us anticipated.”

Indeed, it would be hard to point to a private hospital with 90 in-patient beds, a 120-bed skilled nursing home and various clinics that took six years and $1 billion to build, especially given that the land was provided free. But the efficiency of government construction projects is a separate issue.

Our neediest and most severely injured veterans have been promised medical care as part of the nation’s commitment for their service. It made little sense to require so many of them to travel out of state for such services.

This week, Southern Nevadans and the federal government took another giant step toward keeping that promise.