Steps toward a new Veterans Affairs health care clinic in Chula Vista were recently taken.
Ground breaking for the new clinic at 353 H St. happened last week, and once completed, it will replace the current Chula Vista clinic at 865 Third Ave.
Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System Director Dr. Robert Smith said the new Chula Vista clinic will benefit the South Bay region as the veteran population continues to grow.
“We have outgrown that space,” he said. “The number of veterans in South County, Chula Vista and the surrounding areas has grown. And the current facility is really undersized.”
The current Chula Vista clinic provides care to more than 9,000 veterans living in the South Bay and had more than 30,690 visits in fiscal year 2017, according to Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
Smith said he anticipates an increase of veterans in the South Bay region of 25 to 50 percent in the next several years.
“Currently our South (Bay) location is so small that we haven’t been able to grow,” he said.
“Patients in South Bay are having to go to our main hospital in La Jolla or be seen in Mission Valley.”
The new build-to-suit building will be a two-story 31,000 square-feet facility, three times the size of the current clinic and will offer 236 parking spaces.
The modernized facility will offer veteran services such as primary care, integrated mental health care services, laboratory and pathology, tele-medicine, optometry and podiatry with about 100 staff members. In addition, the clinic will have expanded capacity for appointments.
“This will be a much more spacious and modern facility which will then lead to the conditions of promoting the kind of high quality care that a veteran deserves,” Smith said.
Construction of the new clinic is expected to be completed by December 2019 with a projected opening in early 2020.
The federally funded project is estimated to cost $27 million.
