Two years from now, give or take a few months, the King’s Daughters’ Hospital & Health Services will be moving from its century-plus location in downtown Madison to its new campus in the middle of a field on East S.R. 62. Another downtown Madison institution will have “moved to the hilltop,” as we say here in this river city.
It appears that the move is going to happen, in spite of hell and the opposition of most local residents. KDH expanded and expanded and expanded over the years, buying up increasing numbers of residences on the north side of the downtown and thus taking them off the tax rolls; and now it’s going to walk away and leave a huge (I’m talking REALLY big, for a city the size of Madison) empty complex, presumably as a monument to … something.
Of course KDH says the new clinic on the Broadway side will remain open, with 200 employees still working on site. But I suspect that when they realize that nobody likes the separation of clinic from new hospital, everything else will be moved out of town, too.
Which brings me to the point of this column. What if KDH could interest the Veterans Administration in leasing the downtown medical complex for an auxiliary hospital to the main VA hospital for this area, which is located in Louisville?
Oh, I know what many will say: “KDH would never do that; the VA hospital would be in direct competition with them!”
No, it wouldn’t. Only military veterans and their dependents are eligible for treatment in VA hospitals. There wouldn’t be any “direct competition.” And after all, the facility, sprawling over an area about two blocks long by a block and a half deep, was designed to be a hospital. It wasn’t designed to be “senior citizens housing” or any of the other things that have been suggested, cavalierly, as possible uses for the abandoned facility.
Locating an auxiliary VA hospital in the KDH downtown campus would be a boon to veterans in this area, from Scottsburg through Madison to Carrollton. The Scott County and Carroll County cities each have a VA clinic now, but any veteran in this area having to seek in-patient treatment in a government facility has to travel to Louisville. A local VA hospital would be a godsend for Jefferson County, Scott County, and Trimble and Carroll counties veterans whose travel time would thus be much shorter — not to mention the travel time for family members and friends visiting them.
I have heard, but haven’t been able to verify, that the VA looked at the KDH facility several years ago, but decided against a local facility. If that is so, then, that was then, and this is now. It seems to me that this idea is worth pursuing, so that downtown Madison isn’t devastated by the loss of one of its largest facilities and its largest employer. Remember, a VA hospital would, of necessity, hire quite a few local people. And heaven knows we need jobs.
I must confess I got this idea from a friend. He is a military veteran, as am I. So, yes, we’ve got a dog in this fight. But so do many, many other local veterans. My friend and I think this is worth some discussion. What do you think, loyal readers?
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