Second Opinion

As a veteran and a physician, I believe that all individuals who have served our country in the armed forces deserve the best health care services our nation has to offer.

I received a purple heart in Vietnam and mustered out of the Marine Corps as a captain in 1968, then came to the University of Louisville to attend medical school.

Once I completed my internship and residency at UofL-affiliated hospitals (which included the Louisville Veterans Affairs Medical Center, or VAMC), I served as a member of the VAMC physician staff for more than eight years and have been on the UofL faculty for more than 25 years.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is in the process of gathering information and opinions in order to determine where a new VA hospital should be built in Louisville.

This is an important issue not only for veterans, but also for their families and, in fact, the entire community.

My experiences as a Marine, a VAMC patient, a VAMC trainee (student, intern and resident), a VAMC staff physician and administrator, and a UofL clinician and teacher give me a unique perspective on veterans' health care issues.

They also have motivated me to take part in the emerging public dialogue about the possibility of establishing a new VA hospital in the downtown Louisville area.

You may know that the VA currently partners with the University of Louisville in both education and patient care, with Jewish Hospital in cardiac care and with other facilities in the downtown medical center for various services.

While the current VA facility enjoys a lovely natural setting, both the physical facilities available at the VA hospital and its distance from key services downtown create significant challenges in ensuring that veterans receive the very best care our community has to offer.

New advances in both cardiac care and stroke intervention can do wonders to preserve heart health and brain function -- but these treatments may only be effective if the individual experiencing a heart attack or stroke can access key medical services quickly.

If treatment is delayed in the case of heart attack, scar tissue can develop in the heart, creating a higher risk of complications and heart failure for the patient.

For stroke victims, minutes count. Quick access to clot-busting drugs and other treatments can preserve brain function, often saving patients months of rehabilitation or dramatically reducing permanent neurological problems.

Today, many of our veterans who find themselves having a heart attack or stroke and go to the VA hospital then experience significant delays in transfer to Jewish Hospital (in the case of cardiac care) or to University Hospital's recently certified Level I Stroke Center.

At present, the VA simply doesn't have the facilities or on-site expertise available 24 hours a day to administer these treatments.

In urgent or emergent situations, transfer from the VAMC to the downtown Louisville Medical Center wastes precious time.

As a physician and a veteran, I feel for those patients and their families who undergo needless delays, complications and stress during an already challenging time.

If the VA were to move its facility to the Louisville Medical Center, treatment would be at the veterans' doorstep, and each individual would receive the very best care available.

Other challenges at the current facility include lack of privacy in examination rooms and lack of facilities for women's healthcare -- a key concern for female veterans, of whom there are more than 21,000 in Kentucky alone.

As the VA begins a community dialogue through the VA CARES process, it is my sincere wish that veterans, administrators, health-care professionals and the community at large can find common ground and agree on a plan which will ensure that all veterans get the outstanding medical care that they deserve.

Hugh Peterson, M.D., is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Louisville.