The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), Washington DC, is set to merge with the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC), Bethesda, Maryland, under the 2005 federal Base Realignment and Closure mandate (BRAC). The merger will create Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and it will be located on the current NNMC campus at 8901 Rockville Pike, Bethesda.
The hospital will gain about 2,500 employees, the majority will come from Walter Reed-representing close to half that hospital’s staff-as well as some staffers from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. The merger will also double the hospital’s patient capacity (up to about 1,000,000 per year) and augment its medical repertoire. NNMC has been long recognized as a premiere brain trauma center, while WRAMC’s modus operandi is amputee care. Come September 2011, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center will cater to the needs of both patient populations.
“It exemplifies what the goal of the BRAC was,” said Capt. David Bitonti, the hospital’s chief of staff for integration and transition. “To focus the unique capacity of the two separate facilities and bring them together on one campus as the future.”
More than five years of planning have gone into preparing the 245-acre campus. Construction began in 2008 and is expected to continue through late summer. Slightly less than half of the building renovations and new construction planned for the merger are scheduled to be completed between now and September 2011, the hospital’s mandated opening date. At least four unfinished projects are slated for completion by the end of August, said Capt. Steve Hamer of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, who is overseeing the $1.3 billion construction project.
The main projects at the hospital include four new structures: an outpatient care center and an accompanying 950-space parking garage, a 1,200-space multiuse garage, and a 153 suite barracks. A 162,000-square-foot addition has been added to an existing medical building for emergency services and intensive care and another building is being renovated, to protect its historic façade, and will include a fitness center, administrative offices, and parking garage. The campus also will renovate its entry gates, to move them farther from the road, in an effort to improve traffic congestion, Hamer said.
The two medical building additions and the accompanying parking garage are the only projects to date that are complete. Among the largest and most clinically important additions to the campus is the America Building, a 550,000-square-foot facility that houses most of the hospital’s outpatient clinics, including women’s health services, pediatric care, and an amputee center in its basement. The amputee center will include a state-of-the-art Gait Lab and a Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) lab equipped with virtual reality scenarios that simulate real-life activities such as waterskiing or bike riding.
In advance of the merger, the campus has incorporated non-mandated additions contributed by outside donors. The Fisher House Foundation donated three Fisher Houses that provide free housing to families of servicemen and women undergoing treatment at the hospital. The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund used $65 million in public donations for a traumatic brain injury and psychological health center, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, which opened last year.
WRAMC currently employs about 6,000 people. The remainder of the WRAMC staff will be reassigned to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where a hospital will open as part of the same federal mandate. NNMC currently employs about 8,000 people. Between 500 and 600 people currently employed at NNMC also will move to Fort Belvoir.
