White River Junction VA Medical Center, Vermont

The White River Junction VA Medical Center (WRJ VAMC) isn't just changing the face of its Medical Center, we are enhancing clinical systems and capabilities to ensure Vermont and New Hampshire Veterans continue to receive the best possible care available. To you and I that may mean enduring a few short term inconveniences and annoyances. The staff at the WRJ VAMC is here to assure all local Veterans that we will soon be reaping the long term benefits of these efforts.

Over many years, the VA in White River Junction has been known for the quality care it provides its Veteran population, and we're not about to compromise that good standing. Our clinical services have to match the increasing demand for the highly technical diagnostic processes and tools available in the healthcare field today. For the good of our patients and the Veterans we so passionately serve, we have to keep up with or ahead of the technological demands to maintain that level of quality.

We started the year by reintroducing our patients and staff to Romeo and Juliet, a cute couple on wheels. Romeo and Juliet are a pair of automated delivery robots or tugs as we call them in the hospital setting. The tugs navigate hallways, avoid obstacles, and remotely call elevators to deliver lab specimens from the Medical Center inpatient setting to the hospital laboratory for analysis. Over the years this has been a task delegated to volunteers and staff members at the expense of lost time committed to the patients. It's now a job tasked to a couple that never miss a beat. The introduction of this technology has had a meaningful impact on our clinical operations.

On the Mental Health side of our clinical offerings, we have completely renovated our Inpatient Mental Health ward, which has provided a space that is not only appealing to the eye, but also fully functional for patients and clinical staff alike. We have also built a brand new Executive Division for the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress (NCPTSD) on the front lawn of the grounds. This center serves the trauma related (PTSD, TBI, etc…) Mental Health needs of Veterans throughout the country. It is a research and education facility devoted to increasing the knowledge and understanding of how to recognize and care for trauma related brain injuries.

VA has also extended its reach to two new locations in its hospital service area (responsible for serving all counties in Vermont and four and one half counties in New Hampshire). We have introduced two new Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOC) to the Newport and Brattleboro Vermont communities, serving Veterans at both ends of the Interstate 91 corridor. This now raises the number of rural clinics managed by WRJ to 6.

We're not done there. As you approach the White River Junction VA grounds, you'll no doubt notice the addition of a third floor to our Primary Care Outpatient building. That will house a 16,200 sq. ft. addition for Specialty Care services, with the emphasis on one stop care when you enter that wing of the facility for outpatient care. A bit further down the hallway, and not so visible from the curbside, we have started the renovation of existing space for a new state of the art Occupational and Physical Therapy Clinic under our Med/Surg. Units in building 31.

Still yet to come in the very near future, will be completely new additions for an expanded imaging center and a psychiatric rural residential care center. The imaging center will expand our radiographic screening services by adding a permanent MRI and an angiography suite. The residential care center will add an extra measure of depth to our Mental Health and Residential care programs for the new generation of returning Veterans.

When all is said and done, we hope your experience at the White River Junction VA Medical Center is the best you could possibly imagine, with the best clinical outcome. Our hope is that the White River Junction VA Medical Center is a place where Veterans from all over the Northeast come for care over and over again.