Copyright AL.com
Thousands of veterans in North Alabama will soon have fewer reasons to drive to Birmingham for specialized healthcare. The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to expand healthcare options in Huntsville. The city currently has an outpatient clinic on Markaview Road and an extension at Redstone Arsenal, both part of the Birmingham VA Health Care System. In a statement to AL.com this week, the Birmingham VA said it would open a 7,000-square-foot Huntsville South VA Clinic inside the UAB Medicine facility on Governors Drive before the end of 2025. The facility will expand specialty care services in northern Alabama, “home to the state’s fastest-growing Veteran population,” according to the organization. The Huntsville outpatient facility currently offers primary care and some specialty services, including mental health, vision, hearing loss, and women’s health. Oladipo Kukoyi, Birmingham VA executive director, told WHNT that Huntsville South will include cardiology and neurology, with plans “to do some cancer infusions there.” Veteran service organizations and military retirees told AL.com that they are happy about the development. “It is a fantastic thing; it’s been needed for a long time,” said Jim King of Still Serving Veterans, a Huntsville-based organization that provides employment services to retired service members. “I’m excited about it.” He said North Alabama is home to 80,000 veterans, about one in four of Alabama’s 300,000 veterans. Some Still Serving Veterans clients repeatedly made the hours-long trip to and from Birmingham, King said, including a woman who was undergoing cancer treatment. “She had to go do her treatments and those cancer treatments, it’s not one and done, it goes over a period of time, so she was essentially driving two days a week to Birmingham, which is almost a 2-hour drive from here, to get her treatment.” Veteran Dean Haage, who described the news of expanded healthcare services in north Alabama as “fantastic,” spoke of the hassle of traveling to Birmingham for medical care. “We spend way too much time going back and forth to Birmingham for anything outside the norm,” he said. “One of the guys I used to work with, who lives up here locally, spends probably a week every month down in Birmingham, just having to travel back and forth,” Haage said. “So if he has to go down there for an hour-long appointment, it’s a whole day event, and the cost of travel, you know, all that just adds up all the time.” He was in Birmingham six times in the past month. “One appointment I went down there was to a specialty clinic,” he said. “It took me over 2.5 hours to get there because it was very early morning, and driving down Interstate 65 at that time of day, and I was there for all of 4.5 minutes. I turned around and came home.” The need to travel to Birmingham can be a barrier to seeking medical care, according to veteran Joe Stevenson. “A lot of time, veterans, because they had to travel to the facility, and you know it takes so much time, some of them may opt not to do it,” he said. “But if it’s local, it’s close, I think they’ll take more of an advantage of it and it’ll be good.” Randy Shoulders said, “running back and forth to Birmingham,” especially for someone like him who is not “in the best of health,” can be a problem. “As an organization that supports veterans and their families, we’re encouraged to see expanded access to healthcare services for veterans in North Alabama,” United Way Priority Veteran, which offers assistance with homeless prevention and support, said in a statement to AL.com. Apart from the specialized clinic at UAB Medicine, Birmingham VA also said that in the next three years, Huntsville would see a 20,000-square-foot Women’s Health Clinic and a 20,000-square-foot clinic dedicated to mental health, social work, and home-based primary care services. “Additionally, plans are underway for a 24,000-square-foot Dental Clinic in Greenbriar, Alabama,” the organization said. Greenbriar is about 20 miles south of Huntsville. “All three projects are currently in the early design stages and represent the continued investment in expanding access to specialized and comprehensive care for Veterans across North Alabama,” the organization added. King said what the region ultimately needs is a VA hospital. “It would be great if they had a full-service VA hospital in north Alabama, but having a specialty clinic is still great,” he said.
