The new Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center near Denver, which opened its doors and began seeing its first patients in late July 2018, will provide nearly 400,000 Veterans in Colorado and adjacent states with state-of-the-art services, including VA’s first Spinal Cord Injuries and Disorders Center in the state. The Medical Center represents one of the Veterans Health Administration’s most ambitious projects ever: replacing the Eastern Colorado Health Care System facility with a new 1.2 million square foot facility, comprising nine buildings plus parking and site infrastructure.
The home stretch leading up to the grand opening is known as “activation,” and it involves coordinating thousands of logistical steps to equip and furnish the buildings, confirm their data and communication systems, hire new people, develop and implement hundreds of operating policies and procedures — and sequence everything together in the right order, on time and on budget.
Due to the massive scale of this project, VA brought in Atlas Research to augment its knowledge and skill base in the activation process. Atlas has a strong capability in facilities transformation, focused on bringing industry best practices to bear on major hospital projects in the public sector.
When members of the Atlas team first arrived in the summer of 2016, they quickly made their presence felt by recognizing and addressing critical disconnects between the formal scope of work and those things that needed to be done to advance the activation effort. They offered recommendations for closing some gaps in planning and resources and provided execution support to keep the activation on schedule.
The outpatient clinic is up and running, with surgeries and inpatients set to open in early August. Sixty transition teams are helping to move patients and equipment and get everything into place.