Posted on 05/13/2005 6:15:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon wants to close the Army's century-old hospital at Walter Reed Medical Center, the world-renowned facility in the nation's capital that has treated presidents and foreign leaders as well as soldiers and veterans.
The proposal is part of a broad reordering of the military's system for medical education, research and care, which the Pentagon says suffers from a mismatch of needs and resources.
Inpatient services would be curtailed at some military bases, and some facilities would be consolidated. Under the plan, the shuttering of Walter Reed would involve moving some of its staff and services to an expanded health care facility on the campus of the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md. The new facility would retain the Walter Reed name, officials said.
"It will rival Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and the other great medical institutions of the world," Lt. Gen. George Taylor, the Air Force surgeon general, told a Pentagon news conference, referring to the new Walter Reed.
The plan is contained in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's recommendations for base closings and realignments, which he submitted Friday to an independent base closing commission and to Congress. Pentagon officials said they expect some elements of the medical proposals to stir controversy, particularly the closure of Walter Reed, the most famous military hospital.
Dr. William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said Rumsfeld wants to use the base consolidation - the military's first since 1995 - as an opportunity to gain efficiencies in the medical care system and better position it for the 21st century.
"It is a plan that allows us to invest in and modernize key flagship facilities," he said in an interview.
After spending an estimated $2.4 billion to make these changes over the coming six years, the Pentagon projects that it would then yield a net savings of $400 million a year thereafter.
Walter Reed hospital first opened in 1909 and has treated presidents, members of Congress and foreign leaders, in addition to members of the armed forces and veterans. Today it admits about 16,000 patients a year. They include hundreds of the more seriously wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The far larger Navy hospital at Bethesda opened in 1942.
Research at Walter Reed's satellite Forest Glen facility at Silver Spring, Md., will be expanded.
Among other proposed changes:
_ Build a new 165-bed hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., just south of Washington. Creating the expanded facility in Bethesda - to be renamed the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda - and building the new hospital at Fort Belvoir will cost a combined $1 billion, according to Taylor, who directed a multi-service group that developed the overall plan for changing the medical care delivery system.
Taylor said Thursday that the 450,000 military beneficiaries in the Washington area who currently rely on Walter Reed and Bethesda will see no net decline in health care services. And once the changes are completed, the Pentagon will be able to run the military medical care system in the national capital region for $100 million a year less than it costs today, he said.
_ Similar to the merging of Walter Reed and Bethesda services for the Washington area, the Pentagon would create a single, expanded medical center for the San Antonio area by closing Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and moving its resources to the 450-bed Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in northeastern San Antonio.
Brooke also would expand its trauma services. The Pentagon would build a new outpatient, same-day surgical center at Lackland.
_ Fort Sam Houston would get a new medical training center for enlisted personnel from all the services. Currently each service sends its enlisted people to separate sites for this training - Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas; Fort Sam Houston and Navy bases in Virginia, Illinois and California.
_ Fort Sam Houston also will be the home of a new "center of excellence" in battlefield health and trauma, to be staffed by people from all the military services. Similar joint-service centers will be created elsewhere for other specialties like infectious disease research.
Fort Sam Houston overall would gain about 9,000 positions. Lackland would lose a few thousand.
_ Medical centers on nine military bases in eight states will close their inpatient care facilities and become same-day surgical centers. They are at Fort Eustis, Va., Fort Knox, Ky., Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois, Andrews Air Force Base, Md., MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., Scott Air Force Base, Ill., Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
_ The aerospace medicine program at Brooks City-Base - formerly Brooks Air Force Base - in San Antonio would be moved to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Wright-Patterson also would obtain the Navy's aero-medical research laboratory now located at Pensacola, Fla.
_ All military functions at Brooks City-Base would cease, Taylor said. The Pentagon currently leases the space it has used there from the city of San Antonio. "We're not shutting the doors to the place. We'll simply remove the military structure at Brooks City-Base," Taylor said.
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Walter Reed Army Medical Center at http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/
National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda at http://www.bethesda.med.navy.mil/
I wonder what condition the building is in. If it is in horrible shape (it is a bit older), it would make absolutely no sense to rebuild it, considering the cost of the land, labor and everything else that goes into remodeling and rebuilding a major hospital, especially in the DC area....
I don't have the link handy, there are moving it / merging it with another "name" mil hospital.
At least that is what the military thinks thinks it needs to do.
Of course, every politician thinks otherwise.
LVM
yeah...
they seem to be moving quite a bit of medical stuff to Wright Patterson AFB, which is where I work. They have a huge hospital and I think they could merge it with what Walter Reed pulls in....
"Center of Excellence"? You just know that some Colonel somewhere came up with this crappy name to make his first star.
I'm a GD ee too. ATP.
Wright Patterson is more than just the museum...there is quite a bit of stuff there actually....
I work for GD-NS......I work on computers and stuff like that....
here, check it out...
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/welcome.html
there is more there than their welcome page says, but this is just the UNCLASS version....
This is what the Air Force Surgeon General said today. I don't think this article reflects what he said at all.
then I wonder why they are closing it?
That would be more like a realignment to me personally....
Having both BAMC and Wilford Hall in the same city was not cost effective and Wilhall is not in very good shape.
Looks like they are moving some things back from Brooks that went to Brooks from Wright-Patt at the same time our family got orders for Kelly AFB. I think consolidating all medical research with the labs at Area B is a great idea. Never could figure out why they were at Brooks and not Wright-Patt.
having just been here at Wright Pat for nearly 5 months now, I am surprised they arent using it more. I guess that is what this is...
when I had my elbow surgery, I had to do a 3 month physical for a year afterwards, and that was always at Wright Pat. Too bad the elbow never quite recovered correctly....
Right now I would not trust a fu(*^g thing that the President and Don Rumsfeld come up with. As conservatives we set back and take anything these two come up with. Seldom is a word of criticism voiced by conservatives about the decisions that either one of these men makes.
It's time to do some critical thinking about the current administration and all of its decisions. The President clearly isn't given to putting the welfare of working Americans on his agenda. His wrong headed push for CAFTA is only going to benefit multi-national corporations who feel no sense of guilt when dealing in nations where child labor is rampant and slave wages are the norm. In fact our current trade policies encourage slavery.
It is a sorry time in our nation's history to be a conservative. If not for the war on terror the President's administration would be worse than Clinton's.
Pardon my rant.
ummmmm what does your rant have to do with the BRAC?
time's up...thats right
NOTHING!!!
In my job, I deal with Edwards and Hill AFB the most with F/A-22.
BTW - thank you for your service. :)
It is a sorry time in our nation's history to be a conservative.
Conservative? The above rant is straight out of anarchist/communist propaganda.
nice....I am wondering what the GD guys up at Groton are going to do now but it will figure itself out....
ohh sorry :)
yeah I work for GD Network Systems :)
no big deal. Going to Iraq gave me a ton of experience and got me in with GD, which is a great company to work for from what I can tell...
Well, we shouldn't think it's a bad thing against GD. Think about it. We need that base in CT. It's all speculation, but it may mean good things for GD Corp.
yeah...
they added 75 contractor positions at Wright Patterson. I know for a fact we will be in the running for them. But I dont worry about that stuff too much....
I used to work for CACI, and after being with GD, I wouldnt go back for any reason...
I am from that area about 25 miles north of Dayton and worked 13 years at Wright-Patt -- four of those in the Command Surgeon's office.
My boss at that time submitted a suggestion to the AF Surgeon General about consolidation and use of the Regional Medical Centers more but looks like it took all this time to do what he suggested years ago. He felt Wright-Patterson with AFIT and the Labs should be the consolidation for Medicine for the AF and other services for training and research. He always thought the Medical Services from each branch should be working side by side.
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