LEWISTON — Local veterans will have to make the long drive to Togus a little while longer.

The Veteran Administration’s new 29,000-square-foot, community-based outreach clinic in Lewiston won’t be seeing large numbers of patients for about another two months, said Ryan Lilly, Togus’ associate medical director.

“Help is on the way,” Lilly said.

“Teamlets” of health care workers — consisting of a physician, a nurse, a clerk and a health technician — are getting ready for the move to Lewiston, he said. But preparations need to be made for the patients they are leaving and the ones they are taking on. Appointments need to be made and the infrastructure in Lewiston needs to be solid.

“There are certain things we can do before we own the building and there are certain things we can’t,” Lilly said. “The biggest thing is that we can’t have VA information technology equipment in the building until it’s ours.”

“I don’t think anybody’s health care is suffering as a result of a delay in getting the clinic open,” Lilly added.

The building was finished and passed to VA hands in February.

In mid-February, a VA health care team from a temporary clinic in Auburn moved in and began treating hundreds of local people. At the time, a VA spokesman said the clinic would be open to thousands more in March. It didn’t happen.

“Everybody is frustrated,” said Jerry DeWitt, a veteran who helped bring the clinic to Lewiston. “We were told two months ago it was going to be open.”

The VA has done little to tell veterans about the change, DeWitt said.

“I share their frustration,” Lilly said of the delay. “Things sometimes move a little slower than any of us would like.”

However, DeWitt said he is also upset previously announced services for the clinic — audiology and optometry — won’t be offered there after all.

Lilly said Tuesday that those two services will instead be offered in Bangor’s VA clinic, where they can reach more people who must drive even farther than veterans in Lewiston-Auburn. It will be the closest VA center for those services for people in both Calais and Caribou.

When everything is fully operational, the new clinic will serve at least 5,000 people, Lilly said.

DeWitt and others worked for about seven years to bring the clinic to Lewiston.

The Department of Veterans Affairs originally intended the facility to be built in the Brunswick area, but veterans lobbied the VA and Maine’s congressional delegation to bring it here, instead. They argued that more veterans would be helped by placing the clinic in Lewiston. U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, picked up the argument and lobbied the VA.

In February 2010, the VA committed $20 million for a long-term lease on the specially built clinic. Construction began last fall.

The clinic is at 15 Challenger Drive, just off Alfred Plourde Parkway and a short distance from Exit 80 of the Maine Turnpike. The property is owned by Maine Veterans Homes, which plans to build an adult day care center beside the clinic.

Lilly said a second health care team will move into the clinic in the coming weeks and more will follow. At full-staffing, the clinic will employ 30 to 40 people, including doctors, nurses, clerks, technicians and mental health workers.

They also plan to have computer links to Togus, something they call “telehealth,” Lilly said.

As more staff moves to Lewiston, individual patients will be contacted and given the choice to receive care at either the clinic or at Togus.

“They don’t need to do anything,” Lilly said. “We’ll be contacting them. They’re free to contact us as well if they want to accelerate the process.”

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