PRIMARY CARE CLINIC FOR VETERANS TO OPEN IN CAPE GIRARDEAU

Area veterans will be able to find medical care a little closer to home with the opening of a new Veterans Affairs primary care clinic in Cape Girardeau.

The Cape Girardeau VA Community Clinic, 1923 N. Kingshighway, will offer basic medical care to area veterans and beneficiaries of the TRICARE program, which provides health care to military retirees and their families.

Mental health care had previously been offered at the site and will continue to be available, said Dewayne Coleman, a spokesman for the John J. Pershing Veterans Affairs Hospital in Poplar Bluff.

Without the Cape Girardeau clinic, veterans would have to travel to the Poplar Bluff hospital or to the VA hospital in St. Louis.

"We have hundreds of people from that immediate area that are on the rolls here now that we have already corresponded with and let them know the clinic is open," Coleman said. "We can now serve more veterans in the Cape Girardeau area where travel was a problem. Now they can come out and see us there."

The clinic will also be available for veterans in Southern Illinois, he said.

The clinic's services have been expanded to include medical care, he said, to make it easier for veterans to access programs.

"We're trying to make VA health care much more accessible to the veterans, taking it to them instead of them coming to us," Coleman said.

Dr. V.J. Nair, an internal medicine specialist, will serve as the clinic's primary care physician. In addition, a psychologist and a psychiatrist will also staff the clinic, as will support staff, including nursing and clerical personnel.

Last September the VA began offering mental health services through the Missouri Veterans' Home in Cape Girardeau.

"Our plan at that time was to eventually have primary care established and get a larger location," Coleman said. "We've done that."

The new Cape Girardeau clinic is the VA's third community clinic in the region. The other two are in West Plains and in Paragould, Ark.

In addition, a mobile clinic also operates in the region, and the West Plains clinic operates a mobile clinic in Farmington. Coleman said the VA hopes to turn the Farmington operation into a fully staffed community clinic and has requested funding for the switch.

Last year approximately 12,000 veterans made approximately 50,000 visits to the VA hospital in Poplar Bluff, Coleman said.

"We expect the availability, the better access we're going to have through our community clinics is going to significantly increase those numbers," he said. "And we're seeing that already. The numbers of new veterans, veterans who haven't used the VA before, are really increasing."