From Ellinwood Hospital
Nearly three years ago, a group of veterans and a couple of very caring individuals approached the Ellinwood Hospital and asked, “What are you going to do with the hospital on Main Street in Ellinwood once you finish construction of the new hospital?” The Board of Directors had not yet decided but they were very interested in seeing that building used for humanitarian purposes.
This veterans group started calling themselves the Fort Zarah Veterans Advisory Council because of their vision to create a Veterans Clinic and Transitional Housing facility. They met with a couple Ellinwood Hospital & Clinic (EHC) Senior Leadership Team members to discuss the possibility of requesting the Hospital to donate this property to the project of developing a Fort Zarah Veterans Clinic & Temporary Housing. They teamed up with The Center for Counseling in Great Bend because of the need to operate under a non-profit corporate entity so that they would not need to develop yet another 501(c)(3) corporation and veterans are sometimes in need of counseling because all that they’ve been through protecting this country.
Unfortunately, they discovered that the VA had no funds for the cost to remodel the old hospital but the Fort Zarah Veterans Advisory Council continued to conduct research for Federal programs that supported the medical needs of the 9,000 Veterans residing in Central Kansas. Currently a veteran needs to drive to a small Clinic in Hays, Hutchinson, Dodge City or the Robert J. Dole Veteran’s Hospital in Wichita to pursue medical services.
The Veterans Advisory Council was starting to get frustrated with the lack of governmental funding support for our veterans, but the Ellinwood Hospital Board still had a heart for serving the medical needs of resident Veterans in Central Kansas – total Veterans in central KS is over 9,000.
One of the Advisory team members found a Federal program called the VA Community Care Network (VACNN) and Ellinwood’s brand new hospital would make the perfect solution for serving our Veterans because of the new facilities which includes, state of the art medical equipment, easy to quickly get to on the West side of Ellinwood, a very advanced Physical Therapy dept., 2 high tech O.R. rooms, 25 bed critical access facility, a fully equipped Lab, a advanced tech X-ray department, and a team of Doctors, Providers & staff that would love to serve our Veterans. Thanks to our new CEO Troy Moore, he supported the project of looking into this Federal program and pursue the possibility of getting approved and credentialed by the Veteran Affairs (who is led by our Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, Subcommittee Chairman) Department in Washington D.C..
Senator Moran was a huge supporter of our new hospital in central Kansas. He was very enthusiastic to learn we had been approved to be a new member of the Veteran Affairs Community Care Network and his response to this project aligned with his enthusiasm -
“No veteran in Kansas should have to wait a long time or travel great distances to receive the care they have earned and deserve from the Department of Veterans Affairs. With this approval, the Ellinwood Hospital & Clinic will be able to serve veterans in central Kansas and increase access to care. I am grateful to EHC’s Board and Senior Management, along with VA and OptumServe, for making this possible.”
Because of the huge support of EHC’s Board, Senior Management and Senator Moran’s staff, EHC has been approved by the VACCN in D.C. to be a Veteran’s Medical provider for our Central Kansas Veterans which totals approximately 9,000 Military Veterans. This will provide our Veterans medical services that are much closer which saves them mileage and much quicker service for their medical needs. EHC is proud to serve our central Kansas residents and our central Kansas Veterans.