AURORA, Colo. — On Friday, the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System will begin moving outpatient services from the old VA hospital on E. 9th Avenue and Clermont Street in Denver to the new Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora.
Twenty-six clinics will move to the new facility on Friday and Saturday. It will take 90 truckloads to move around 800 pieces of equipment. The first patients will be seen at the new hospital on Tuesday.
Last year the VA Eastern Colorado Healthcare System supported more than 1,033,000 outpatients visits.
The next step will involve moving inpatients. That move, comparable to a hospital evacuation, will happen Aug. 4. Patients will be moved by ambulance from Denver to Aurora. The emergency room at the new hospital will open that same day.
The Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center has been plagued by controversy since the groundbreaking in 2009.
Contact 7 recently spoke with a veteran who struggled to get any information on the new facility, including where to go for her next appointment in September.
Director of the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System Sallie Houser-Hanfelder said she expects some challenges as services are shifted to the new hospital.
"We have a new program — Red Coat Ambassadors — who are there to help veterans get to where they need to go and we have a transport team in the event they can't physically get where they need to go on their own," she said.
Veterans can also access a map of the new hospital here.
