By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
FORT BELVOIR, Va., July 9, 2013 – The old adage that “if you
build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to military
hospitals, the commander of the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital
recognizes.
Fort
Belvoir Community Hospital in Northern Virginia, shown here, is a
state-of-the-art military medical facility that opened in August 2011.
The hospital, along with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in
Bethesda, Md., and other military health care facilities in the
Washington D.C. area, is part of National Capital Region Medical -- a
joint-service organization providing health care for military
beneficiaries throughout the region. DOD photo by Marc Barnes
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. |
|
That’s particularly true in places like the Washington, D.C., area
where service members, retirees and family members can choose from an
array of top-notch civilian facilities to get their medical care, Army
Col. Chuck Callahan told American Forces Press Service.
But with a
gleaming 1.3-million-square-foot facility and a strategy centered on
taking care of patients and their families, Callahan has set out to
attract more of the 164,000 military health care beneficiaries in the
region that currently use TRICARE to seek their care at Fort Belvoir.
“Because Fort Belvoir Community Hospital is not the only game in town,
we must compete with civilian facilities who also want to care for our
patients,” Callahan said. “My opinion is that the way to do that is to
build a system that people want to come to.”
The new hospital
stands in stark contrast to the 1950s-era DeWitt Army Community Hospital
it replaced. Built in compliance with the congressionally mandated 2005
Base Realignment and Closure reorganization plan, the new hospital is
part of a sweeping plan to improve the efficiency of military health
care in the Washington, D.C., area.
While the renamed Walter Reed
National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., serves as the
military’s premier referral medical center, Fort Belvoir provides
primary and specialty care to a largely regional clientele.
Shortly after assuming command last year, Callahan unveiled an
organizational strategy aimed at making the hospital the facility of
choice to an estimated half-million eligible beneficiaries in the
national capital area.
In the most basic terms, it boils down to
economics, he explained. The Defense Department spent $19 billion on
health care in 2001 and will spend $49 billion this year. That figure is
expected to skyrocket to $92 billion by 2030 -- consuming almost 10
percent of the entire DOD budget.
As Callahan sees it, paying for
patients to get care at civilian facilities when military ones can
accommodate them doesn’t make financial sense. “We are buying the care
twice,” he said, paying for the new $1 billion Fort Belvoir hospital and
its staff, but also picking up the tab for 164,000 people enrolled in
the regional TRICARE network.
“Something has to change,” Callahan
said, particularly with rising health care costs on a collision course
with shrinking budgets.
So Callahan has taken matters into his
own hands, working to create an environment “where patient- and
family-centered care meets evidence-based design in a culture of
excellence.” That boils down to a facility where patients and families
have hassle-free access to the highest-quality care and services, and
where they feel comfortable and welcomed as they receive them, he
explained.
Everything about the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital
supports this vision. The new facility has greater capabilities than
standard community hospitals. It includes 120 single-inpatient rooms, a
10-bed intensive-care unit, 10 state-of-the-art operating rooms, a
behavioral health unit, an advanced cancer care center, breast care
center, emergency department, pharmacy, diagnostic centers and modular
clinic space for outpatient services.
Planners have made getting
these services as simple and convenient as possible. Appointments are
easy to make and parking is plentiful. Once inside the hospital,
patients and their families are treated to a beautiful, calming
environment designed to be therapeutic: lots of natural light and
outside views, décor inspired by nature and color-coded wings that help
visitors maintain their bearings.
One of the most soothing
features is what visitors don’t see. There’s no click-clacking of
laundry carts crowding the hallways, and maintenance and other logistics
activities are relegated to non-prime operating hours.
The staff
took a cue from The Walt Disney Co., instituting its strict standards
of “on-stage” and “off-stage” activities, Callahan explained.
“The idea that health care should have at least the same service
standards as any other service industry is not the way health care has
always looked at itself,” he said. “But this is really evolving, and it
is part of the culture of excellence that we are working to establish
here.”
It’s all part of a plan to make care at the facility
centered on the patient and family, he said. That begins the moment they
pick up the phone to make an appointment and continuing when they
arrive at the facility and throughout their treatment.
But most
importantly, Callahan said it centers on a relationship between patients
and the health care providers who make up their “medical home.” Unlike
most civilian doctors whose focus is on treating patients when they are
sick -- necessitated largely by the way insurance reimburses them for
services -- medical home providers concentrate on keeping patients
healthy, he explained.
It’s a formula Callahan said the entire
Military Health System is embracing, and that makes Fort Belvoir
Community Hospital particularly attractive to military health care
beneficiaries.
“People like coming here,” he said. “But they also have a choice” about where they get their care.
"As we implement this strategy, we are building a culture of excellence
and an [environment] that people will want to come to," he said.
"We know that consistent, predictably accessible, and convenient health
care created around the medical home and medical neighborhood will
build trust, foster communication and provide opportunities to promote
health and well-being for our beneficiaries,” Callahan said. “This is
the mission and the vision of the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital."
(Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of two articles on the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Northern Virginia.)
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