New Fisher House For James A. Haley Veteran’s Hospital?

Posted Dec 16, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Dec 16, 2011 at 09:52 PM

I went to an interesting meet and greet with Kathleen Fogarty, the new medical center director at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital.

For the first time in what many of those attending could remember, a Haley director put on a glitzy show of where the hospital has been and where it is going.

One of the more promising ideas Fogarty is pursing involves building another Fisher House on the hospital’s campus. Fisher House, which gives families of those received intense treatment at the hospital a place to live, is a tremendous innovation in treating the wounded. Whether there are funds to build another one, or even room, remains to be seen.

Another takeaway from the meeting was that Haley is trying to “right-size” its staff, going from the 4,800 it had back in 2006 before the VA stood up a separate operation in Orlando, to “somewhere south of 4,000,” at some point in the future.

Fogarty did not say how far south, or exactly when. The cuts, she said, will be made through attrition. There are currently about 4,100 employees, she said.

There’s a lot more to come about the future of Haley, but I got pulled off by a story about a Tampa car dealer who the government says received money from financial institutions and individuals connected to Hezbollah as part of an international money laundering scheme.

The company is accused of no crime, but the government is seeking more than $3 million in assets from the company.

You can read that on TBO.com and in tomorrow’s Tribune.