Military Medical Facilities Abound

Military Medicine, Winter 2008

In early November, ground was broken for a new Army medical center on the site of the old South Nine Golf Course at Fort Belvoir. Mandated by the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005, the new hospital is slated to open its doors by spring 2011. While the Army Corps of Engineers is managing the construction of the $747 million hospital, the facility will be turned over to AMEDD to staff and equip.

The new hospital will encompass 1.2 million square feet of space and will have six levels. A 10-bed intensive care unit; a 12-bed behavioral health inpatient unit; an emergency center; a cancer center; an operative services center with 10 operating rooms; diagnostic centers such as radiology and pathology; and a modular clinical space dedicated to outpatient services are all planned for the new center. Additional space is reserved for the expansion of outpatient services at the new hospital.

There is also room for two parking garages and 2600 parking spaces along with a helipad, dedicated central energy plant and ambulance shelter. The project also includes logistics and administrative services space, food service areas, a chapel and other amenities.

The new James A. Lovell VA-DoD Health Care Facility will open it's doors in 2010 in Chicago. The new $ 130 million hospital will care for close to 100,000 veterans, sailors, retirees and family members. A result of the merger between the Great Lakes Naval Hospital and the North Chicago VA Medical Center, the new facility combines the resources of DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs in the first totally integrated federal healthcare facility in the United States.

Two joint incentive fund proposals (JIF) for Keesler Medical Center and the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System in Biloxi were recently approved by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense. JIFs, created by Congress to encourage the sharing of resources at the facility, national and intraregional levels, compete annually for development dollars. Projects applying for the funding must benefit both the VA and DoD parties involved and also support the VA/DoD Joint Strategic Plan

JIF projects are given seed money to staff, outfit or equip a clinic or project. After two years, the facility must regain enough workload from the civilian sector to pay its salaries and other costs that make the unit run.

At Keesler, the funding will be used for a joint cardiac care center. Specifically, dollars will spent on equipment, the renovation of existing space and the hiring of contract staff. The staff will be operating a modernized angiography suite that will serve as a dual cardiac catherization laboratory and peripheral angiograpy suite. Efficiency, capability and patient safety will all be improved by capability sharing between cardiology, vascular surgery and radiology.

Procedures such as heart, carotid and peripheral vascular procedures can all now be performed with minimal invasion using techniques such as balloon dilation, laser procedures and direct removal of cholesterol plaque and debris. The new lab greatly improves the medical center's ability to perform these procedures, along with pacemaker and defibrillator implantation and cardiac resynchronization therapy.

The funding at Keesler will also be used to hire contract technicians to operate a 3.0 Tesla MRI machine that the center already has. Keesler houses the most advanced MRI machine in the region.

Reference:

Julia LeDoux, "Army Breaks Ground for New Hospital"www.armymil/-news, 19 November 2007

Department of Veterans Affairs News Release, "New VA-DoD Facility Named for Astronaut Jim Lovell" 5 October 2007

Susan Griggs, "VA, DoD joint health projects bring nearly $6 million to Keesler", sg.af.mil/news/story, 27 November 2007

Department of Veterans Affairs News Release, "New VA-DdD Facility Named for Astronaut Jim Lovell", 5 October 2007