About us
At the VA Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System, we’re dedicated to improving the lives of Veterans and their families every day.
About VA Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System
The VA Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System provides you with outstanding health care, trains America’s future health care providers, and conducts important medical research.
Health care and services
We provide you with health care services at 8 locations in southeast Louisiana. Facilities include our New Orleans VA Medical Center and 8 community-based outpatient clinics in Baton Rouge, Bogalusa, Franklin, Hammond, Houma, Slidell, St. John Parish, and Baton Rouge South. To learn more about the services each location offers, visit the VA Southeast Louisiana health services page.
The VA Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System is one of the leading health care systems serving Veterans in the South Central VA Health Care Network. We’re an innovative care center within the Veterans Integrated Service Network 16 (VISN 16), which includes medical centers and clinics in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, southeast Texas, and northwest Florida.
Research and development
New Orleans VA Medical Center has an active accredited research program. We conduct research to discover knowledge, develop VA scientists and health care 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. Our goal is to use research to promote better health and health care for all.
Major research areas include:
Coming soon!
Teaching and learning
New Orleans 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. Our medical center has teaching and research affiliations with Tulane University School of Medicine and Louisiana State University School of Medicine.
We offer residency training in many major medical specialties and subspecialties. We also train physician assistants and nurses and provide associated training in other health professions, including psychology.
We’re proud of our partnerships with top institutions and organizations that support the educational mission of the VA.
Fast facts
- We provide health care services for Veterans in 23 parishes in southeast Louisiana.
- In 2018, we served nearly 45,000 Veterans, including more than 4,300 women Veterans.
- In 2020, the Human Rights Campaign named the VA Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System an LGBT Health Care Equality Leader for the fourth year in a row, confirming our commitment to provide equal access to high-quality health care for all Veterans, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Veterans.
- Hurricane Katrina devastated the downtown New Orleans VA Medical Clinic in 2005. We designed the replacement medical center with input from our Veterans throughout the entire process, to ensure that we would succeed in putting patients at the center of everything we do and making safety our top priority.
- In the event of an emergency, the medical center has 100% backup power that can last up to 5 days to keep our patients safe. All mission-critical functions are located at least 20 feet above ground to protect them from flood damage.
- In 1977, Dr. Andrew Schally, a doctor at New Orleans VA Medical Center, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other researchers for his work on peptide hormone production of the brain, which laid the foundation for other types of brain research.
Accreditations and achievements
Our facilities and programs have received accreditation from:
- The Joint Commission
- American Psychological Association