St. Augustine VA Clinic opens its doors to help serve veterans

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — After years in the making, a new state-of-the-art VA Clinic opened its doors in St. Augustine.

Kenneth Holmes a retired army veteran just warped his first appointment inside the new Leo C. Chase Jr. VA Clinic.

“I love it. It’s a beautiful wonderful place,” Holmes said.

“It’s tremendously different from where we were at. we were previously in trailers and you can only do so much with a trailer,” Dr. Thomas Mckenzie, the chief medical officer said.

Dr. McKenzie told us this clinic replaces the old facility on Southpark Boulevard.

The VA clinic named after the first St. Johns County soldier killed in the Vietnam Var.

The idea behind a new VA clinic started back in 2013 and the construction began just two years ago.

Action News Jax toured the building on Tuesday and saw the new exam rooms and labs.

We also check out where the telescope health appointments are performed and saw where the providers are situated to help patients.

The VA Clinic sees more than 6,000 veterans and that number keeps growing.

Dr. McKenzie told me it gets about 30 to 50 new patients a week.

“When you drive down 207 you can see all the construction, Silver Leaf added I think like 10,000 homes and we’re just seeing a large uptick in our population,” Dr. McKenzie said.

Holmes told me he just moved to St. Johns County last year from Wesley Chapel.

“It’s wonderful you don’t have to drive an hour or two hours to get there. This is wonderful,” he said.

The VA Clinic is opened Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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