Old hospital possible site for Northern Nevada veterans home

State officials are looking at Carson-Tahoe Hospital as a possible site for a Northern Nevada veterans home.

Veterans Services Director Chuck Fulkerson told lawmakers Friday he and Public Works Director Dan O'Brien met with hospital officials recently to talk about leasing space once Carson-Tahoe moves into a new regional medical center.

Ground breaking for the new regional center is planned for July.

The current hospital became a private nonprofit facility last year. Officials say they planned to keep the existing building for auxiliary health care.

Fulkerson told a Senate-Assembly subcommittee studying the veterans services budgets Gov. Kenny Guinn included $50,000 in his budget to study the concept of a veterans' nursing home in northern Nevada.

He said in meeting with hospital officials, he and O'Brien discussed leasing a 120-bed wing of the existing hospital, which they would remodel and upgrade to federal standards for a veterans' nursing facility.

Fulkerson said that would be much quicker than planning a new facility, which could take years to win federal funding. He said leasing and remodeling the wing in the existing hospital would save millions in construction costs.

And he said the state could avoid the myriad problems it has had in building the Boulder City nursing home.

An estimated 50,000 of Nevada's 230,000 veterans live in Northern Nevada.