YOUNTVILLE – After 37 years in the health care industry, Don Veverka is at the head of a center that has been home to retired service members for 130 years. But for all the combined years of the Veterans Home of California and its administrator of three months, Veverka describes his vision as pointed fully forward – toward remaking its operation for a future population that may be vastly different from today’s.
“It’s been a very, very complex and fast-paced three months,” the 67-year-old Veverka said Wednesday during an interview at the Yountville home. “But I must say the vast majority of staff recognizes the need for changes and fully embraces them.”
Opened in 1884 and refashioned with landmark Mission Revival buildings starting in the 1920s, the Veterans Home is the largest of its kind in California, with about 1,100 former service members and spouses. It has long been an architectural and scenic landmark amid the Upvalley vineyards. But years of deferred maintenance have left the compound in need of renovations to improve its housing and utilities and add a skilled nursing center — a project that a master plan evaluation by the state Department of Veterans Affairs forecasts may require up to three decades and at least $150 million.
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Although the home’s physical frailties have attracted the attention of state officials, Veverka, who supervised the Washington Veterans Home in Retsil, Washington before coming to Yountville April 1, has turned his focus on smoothing out day-to-day activities first — starting with an admission process for new residents that currently can drag on for up to eight months.
“That resonates loudly with veterans who have gone through that long, laborious process,” he said. “In the private sector, you can get a person admitted in three minutes or less, which begs the question: Why does it take so long here?”
Veverka aims to put a single caseworker in charge of evaluating each new resident, a move he hopes will not only speed up admissions but more quickly identify those in need of behavioral therapy, dementia care and other specialized needs.
A sign of his activity since taking the helm at the Yountville home may be a literal sign, tucked inside a wide wooden cabinet in a conference room and already carpeted with blue, yellow and magenta Post-It notes. Columns of paper slips marked “dental,” “pharmacy,” “veterans claims officers” and the like show the often inscrutable and thistle-like chains of command, which Veverka and his aides are re-arranging in search of efficiency and cost savings.
With no immediate prospect of the millions of state and federal dollars a full overhaul would require, Veverka said he will seek more private donations for the Yountville home. He sees such gifts and smoother-running operations as the best way to build public support for future funding.
“My focus is first on efficient daily operations,” he said. “When we do that, we’ll have a better shot at selling our long-term plan to benefactors.”
At least as crucial as the Veterans Home’s physical overhaul, according to Veverka, is expanding the traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress treatment he predicted will steadily increase in demand as veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars replace the aged generation of World War II-era fighters.
“We must change our focus to remain viable,” he said. “I want us to be developing strong programs to meet (younger) veterans’ needs. Just having custodial care for the aging is not going to cut it for the next generation coming here. We need to focus more on behavioral health, treating the guys with TBI and PTSD.”
Key to winning support for those and other changes, according to Veverka, is sharing ideas with Veterans Home residents as transparently as possible. In addition to lunch with residents daily and meeting weekly with the Allied Council, the residents’ representative body, he also has asked the council to produce its own study on how to improve the center’s housing and refashion it for those needing higher-level care.
“As a team we all win together and we all lose together,” he said. “… Everyone takes ownership in the outcome when you’re about finding the cause. My motto is, fix what bugs you.”