The 128-bed Puller Center in Vint Hill is on track to accept its first patients in March 2022, Steven Combs of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services told county supervisors Thursday. The state-operated nursing home for military veterans is currently under construction and will eventually employ about 220 people.
The facility, located at Vint Hill Parkway and McIntosh Drive in the Vint Hill Economic Development Area, will be organized into 16 “households” in an effort to make the setting “as homelike as possible,” according to the VDVS. Three levels of care – skilled nursing, memory and short-term rehabilitation – will be offered. Hiring is expected to begin this July, with levels of staffing and occupancy gradually increased to full capacity by late 2023.
Construction on the 128-bed Puller Center began in spring 2020 and is expected to be complete by January 2022.
The start of construction in spring 2020 marked the end of years of delays for the project.
VDVS originally applied in 2010 for a federal grant for a Northern Virginia care facility but did not receive funding. In 2016, Virginia state funds were made available for the Northern Virginia facility along with one in the Hampton Roads region. Later that year, VDVS selected the Vint Hill site and one in Virginia Beach. In 2017, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at the Fauquier site, but changes to funding and the design itself delayed the beginning of the project.
An aerial photo, looking east from Vint Hill Parkway, shows progress on the Puller Center construction as of February.
In 2018, the federal Veterans Affairs relaxed guidelines stipulating certain design requirements, allowing VDVS to redesign the facility to, among other things, change the “household” structure from 10 buildings housing 12 patients each to 16 buildings housing 8 patients each; reduce the staff-to-resident ratio from 1:10 to 1:8; add a chapel and activity rooms; and create secure interior courtyards hallways between buildings.
In late 2019 VDVS received a $34 million grant for the Vint Hill project from the federal Department of Veterans Affairs; the grant is matched by state funds, making the budget for the facility about $68 million.
There are two existing long-term veterans care facilities in Virginia – in Roanoke and Richmond. The Puller Center, along with the facility currently being built in Virginia Beach, will bring the number of facilities to four.
Last year, Combs said the Vint Hill location was chosen for the Northern Virginia facility because of the “amazing package from the Fauquier County office of economic development,” emphasizing that planners took into consideration the communities surrounding potential sites.
“You think of Fauquier County and what it has to offer as a community,” he said, “we don’t build in a vacuum. We hope that [the Puller Center] becomes a center of the community, and that the community feels ownership.”
"accept" - Google News
April 09, 2021 at 10:57PM
https://ift.tt/3d24LFV
Vint Hill veterans care facility to accept first patients in spring 2022 - Fauquier Times
"accept" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YsXkRf
https://ift.tt/3d2Wjnc
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Vint Hill veterans care facility to accept first patients in spring 2022 - Fauquier Times"
Post a Comment