Serving those who have served

New VA health care facility on UMass Medical School campus to offer ‘the very best care in the very best clinical spaces’

By Colleen Locke

When the new community-based outpatient clinic for veterans opens on the UMass Medical School campus later this year, the state-of-the-art facility will not only centralize a number of services for veterans that are scattered across the city and region, it will provide opportunities for current and future health care practitioners to learn from and serve those who have served the country.

The years long effort to bring the VA clinic project to the UMMS campus is personal for Chancellor Michael F. Collins, whose father was treated for a brain tumor at the VA in Jamaica Plain. Chancellor Collins said one of his favorite medical school rotations was at that same VA.

“My view is we make a lifetime commitment to those who have served, and I would like the Medical School to be part of fulfilling that commitment,” Collins said.

The clinic areas will occupy the first two floors of the new four-story building, adding 15,000 square feet more of space dedicated to patient care than the three existing VA sites in Worcester combined. This new facility will provide the primary care, mental health, specialty care and rehabilitation services currently offered at the Lake Avenue and Lincoln Street VA sites (which will close), as well as new services such as endocrinology and gastroenterology.

U.S. Rep. James McGovern championed the project at the federal level and facilitated discussions with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that eventually led to the project being approved.

“The problem that Dr. Collins zeroed in on at the beginning was that we had a lot of veterans in Central Massachusetts who had long wait periods in order to get the care that they needed. That’s simply unacceptable. Veterans have stepped forward and in many cases put their lives on the line to protect our country. This is the right thing to do,” McGovern said.

The new clinic is a collaboration between UMMS and the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, longtime partners in delivering health care to veterans. Its location on the Worcester campus expands opportunities for students at the Medical School to train in VA health care.

“This affiliation has afforded us the opportunity to assist in the training of medical students, many of whom have pursued full-time careers within the VA,” said Duane Gill, FACHE, executive director of the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System. “We are proud to work with UMass Medical School in ensuring that our veterans in and surrounding Worcester receive the very best care in the very best clinical spaces available.”

Triage nurse Wanda Scott, RN, BSN, will be working in the new building. She’s also a client, and said the location will make services more visible to veterans like her.

“The location is key,” Scott said.

Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the School of Medicine, said data show that medical students who train in VA health care settings are more likely to care for veterans as doctors.

“As the state’s only public medical school, we have a special obligation to care for the underserved in Massachusetts. This particularly includes veterans, who have been disproportionately affected by depression, suicide, substance use disorders and homelessness. We owe it to our veterans to do everything we can to respond to the invisible and other wounds of war,” said Dean Flotte, whose father was a World War II veteran and whose wife’s 99-year-old grandfather receives his care in Worcester.

Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Sean Collins, PhD’09, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Nursing, who served four combat tours prior to his current assignment as Commander, Air Force Medical Readiness Agency, Headquarters Air Force, has lectured on veterans topics and taught courses on veterans health issues. He said that UMass Medical School students are taught to ask patients if they or a loved one have served in the military.

“I always ask when I’m meeting a patient for the first time, have you served in uniform, because it does give you a different perspective on what that individual may have come in contact with or been exposed to if they deployed,” he said.

“I think this is going to be an enormous statement to those who served our country—that the University of Massachusetts Medical School stands proud in caring for them when they need it,” Chancellor Collins said. ■