And he added that it s sorely needed. We re happy about it, finally. It s just taken forever to get it, Clark said. The population of veterans in Polk County has never been well-served.
The clinic was approved in 2017. The lot near Sam s Club was one of three locations considered, in addition to a location on Kathleen Road near I-4 and one off the Polk Parkway near Florida Polytechnic University, according to LkldNow.com. That s four years, Clark said. We ve won wars in less time.
Clark said the South Pipkin clinic is severely overwhelmed with patients, which is why he s disappointed the new clinic won t start taking patients until 2024. The existing clinic currently serves 23,000 veterans, according to the press release.
Florida to get new veterans clinic in Lakeland - Orlando Business Journal bizjournals.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bizjournals.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Calls to the designated number for making vaccination appointments yielded either a busy signal or the recorded message, “Your call did not go through. Please try your call again later.”
Calls to other numbers with the health department produced the same results.
James Kent of Lake Wales said he had called the vaccination line about 30 times Tuesday. He said most calls resulted in a busy signal. The three times he got through to the electronic answering system, he was promptly disconnected, he said. It s extremely frustrating, that the county system doesn’t seem to be prepared to deal with the requests for vaccinations that they should have expected once they announced a program was going to be in place, that the governor (Ron DeSantis) was going to distribute the vaccines, Kent said.