About us

About VA Louisville health care

The VA Louisville Healthcare System provides you with outstanding health care, trains America’s future health care providers, and conducts important medical research.

Health care and services

The Louisville VA Healthcare System provides  health care services at nine locations in Kentucky and southern Indiana. Facilities include our Robley Rex VA Medical Center and eight community-based outpatient clinics in Carrollton, Clarkson, Fort Knox, and Louisville, Kentucky, and New Albany and Scottsburg, Indiana. To learn more about the services each location offers, visit the VA Louisville health services page.

The VA Louisville Healthcare System is one of the leading health care systems serving Veterans in the VA MidSouth Health Care Network and is an innovative care center within the Veterans Integrated Service Network 9 (VISN 9). This includes medical centers and clinics in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia.

Learn more about VISN 9

Research and development

The Robley Rex VA Medical Center conducts research to discover knowledge, develop VA scientists and healthcare leaders, and create innovations that advance health care for Veterans and the nation. We offer Veterans the opportunity to participate in and benefit from our work. The goal is to use research to promote better health and health care for all.

We currently have 41 principal investigators conducting more than 85 active research projects.

Major research areas include:

• Blood disorders
• Cancer
• Endocrinology
• Heart disease
• Immunology
• Infectious diseases
• Kidney disease
• Liver disease
• Neuropsychiatry
• Pulmonology
• Surgical sepsis
• Vision

For more information on CRF, visit: crflouva.org. 

Teaching and learning

The Robley Rex VA Medical Center is a teaching hospital that provides a full range of services with state-of-the-art technology as well as education and research. The primary medical affiliation is with the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Residency training is offered in many major medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties as well as internal medicine, general surgery, and psychiatry. Every year, more than 350 university residents, interns, and students are trained at Robley Rex VA Medical Center.

The medical center is also affiliated with more than 30 other institutions, including the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky. Through these affiliations, associated health training in audiology and speech pathology, dentistry, healthcare administration, laboratory technology, nuclear medicine, nursing, nutrition, ophthalmologic technology, pharmacy, psychology, radiology, rehabilitative medicine, respiratory therapy, social work, and seminary are provided.

The medical center is also the advanced cardiac life support training hub for most of the residents and many of the critical care nurses in Louisville and the state of Kentucky.

Fast facts

• The VA Louisville Healthcare System has been serving Veterans since 1952
• On January 10, 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the VA request to purchase approximately 59 acres outside the Louisville city limits
• At a total of $8,000,000, the new 494-bed Louisville Veterans Hospital opened on April 2, 1952
• In April 2010, the Louisville VA Medical Center was renamed in honor of World War I-era Veteran and longtime VA volunteer Robley Rex.
• Robley Henry Rex was born in May 1901 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Army in 1919 at age 18 and served in Army Intelligence in Europe. After his discharge from the Army in 1922, Rex returned to Kentucky where he farmed in Daviess County and worked for the U.S. Postal Service before moving to Louisville. In 1986, he started volunteering to help his fellow Veterans. For the next 23 years, he logged more than 14,600 hours as a VA volunteer. Rex died in 2009, a few days before his 108th birthday.

Access to Care

• Is a tertiary care facility classified as a Clinical Referral Level 1b Facility
• Currently serves Veterans living in a 35-county area of Kentucky and Indiana
• Employs over 2,000 people
• Authorized 133 beds
• 123,677 Veterans residing in the catchment area; Enrollment: 60,646; Users: 43,566
• Average Daily Outpatient Visits: 1,746
• Average Daily Outpatient ER Encounters: 50
• Average Daily Discharges: 11
• Average Daily Census: 76
• The facility completed approximately 411,154 appointments in FY 2021 with 98% of these appointments being completed within 30 days of the patient indicated date
• The facility treated 48,415 unique patients with 4,377 of those being women Veterans
• The average wait time from preferred date was:

Mental Health = 2.8 days

Primary Care = 2.5 days

Specialty Care = 5.2 days

• Veterans can get same-day access in primary care and mental health at all locations

The facility has implemented direct scheduling so Veterans can call clinics for an appointment without the need of a consult from their primary care provider in Optometry, Audiology, and Nutrition  

Accreditations and achievements 

Our facilities and programs have received accreditation from:

• The Joint Commission
• American Board for Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics, and Pedorthics
• American College of Surgeons, Commission on Cancer
• Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs
• College of American Pathologists
• Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities
• National Committee for Quality Assurance
• National Health Physics Program

 

The VA Louisville Healthcare System has received the following awards:

• Top Performer for Quality, 2012
• 2009 VA Robert W. Carey Trophy Award, 2009
• VHA Improvement Forum Recognition, 2009
• VA Robert W. Carey Performance Excellence Award, 2007 and 2008
• Kentucky Center for Performance Excellence Award – Achievement Level III, 2008
• Systems Redesign Award Winners, 2007
• VISN 9 Performance Award, 2005 and 2006
• VHA ACA National Champion Team Award - Endoscopy Team, 2006

• LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Top Performer 2016 - Present