New VA medical center to be dedicated in New Orleans

More than 11 years have passed since Hurricane Katrina and its devastating floods struck New Orleans, destroying most of the city’s VA medical center and sending tens of thousands of veterans into a triage health-care system throughout the region and surrounding states. This Friday, Nov. 18, at 9 a.m., the road to VA recovery in the city reaches a billion-dollar destination.

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald will join Louisiana veterans, area dignitaries and American Legion officials to officially cut the ribbon and dedicate the 31-acre state-of-the-art New Orleans VA Medical Center campus. The 1.6-million-square-foot facility, a centerpiece in an emerging biomedical corridor that has helped the city revitalize since the disaster of 2005, will serve approximately 70,000 veteran patients.

Called “Project Legacy,” the medical center will provide 120 inpatient medical and surgical beds, 20 acute psychiatric beds, 40 rehabilitation beds, 20 hospice beds and 23 examination rooms. Outpatient clinical space on campus covers some 400,000 square feet, enough to handle some 500,000 outpatient visits a year. More than 2,000 employees will work on the campus, including approximately 1,100 new hires.

Friday’s dedication ceremony “is a real milestone in restoring health care to the veterans not only of Louisiana, but all across the South,” said American Legion Past National Commander William Detweiler, who has been a tireless advocate of Project Legacy since the aftermath of the storm and floods of 2005.