2010 - St. Cloud VA Health Care System

From the Director
Barry I. Bahl
Director
St. Cloud VA Health Care System
As we look back at 2010, I’m proud to report that the St. Cloud VA
Health Care System continued to grow and expand services to meet
the needs of Veterans. We are postured to continue this trend.
Patient growth continued at a high level, up 9% in 2010. We continue
to be one of the fastest growing VA systems in the nation. The name change announced
this year reflects our reality— our growth has resulted in a system of facilities and health
care services for Veterans across our region.
We remain dedicated to providing our Veterans with outstanding health care and
customer service. This is evidenced by the many successful reviews of our programs in
2010. The Joint Commission visited in October, 2010 and we were awarded accreditation
for an additional three years. A national review team reported that our Compensated Work
Therapy/Supportive Employment program is a “Center of Excellence,” and we are a mentor/
trainer site for the network and other sites across the country. In the two most recent Police
and Security Reviews our facility received the highest rating possible. Numerous other
external reviews throughout the year achieved excellent results.
Our Community Living Center (CLC) remains very full with about 206 patients a
day. Combined with the Residential Rehabilitation and Treatment Program residents, the
facility has a nightly census of 350 patients. Additionally, on any given night there are 10 to
15 patients at area hospitals where acute medicine services are provided to our Veterans.
We have been able to hire great physicians with excellent credentials. Several are
Veterans themselves. We hired additional employees throughout the organization and the
quality of the entire staff is superb.
We completed a substantial amount of construction this year. We opened the new
Urgent Care Clinic, completed the final phases of our road construction project, and
remodeled our Specialty Care support spaces and Acute Psychiatry spaces. The Ambulatory
Surgery Center is nearing completion. The geothermal heating system for one CLC building
was completed. Due to the success of this project we have received additional funding to
install geothermal heating for an additional four buildings.
As we look to 2011, planning for several large projects is underway, including projects to
construct a new kitchen and backfill the current kitchen space with additional Primary Care
clinics; to totally remodel a CLC building (Building 49); to construct a 20‐bed Intermediate
Psychiatry building; to construct a new Rehabilitation Center; and to construct an addition
for the Audiology Clinic.
It is a privilege to serve Veterans, and we understand that Veterans have choices in
health care. The St. Cloud VA Health Care System works hard to deliver excellent health
care and outstanding customer service because we want to be the Veterans choice.