Two military medical icons become one

Two of the nation’s flagship military hospitals will be combined into one on Saturday, the culmination of a costly and controversial decision six years ago to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center and expand the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

A parade of ambulances is scheduled to carry the last 30 patients from Walter Reed the seven miles to Bethesda on Saturday morning, effectively closing the historic Army hospital in Northwest Washington. The move, initially planned for Sunday, has been accelerated by one day in the hopes of beating Hurricane Irene.

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As of Monday, the Bethesda facility will be known as the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and will be the U.S. military’s largest medical center.

The move is part of a larger consolidation of military medicine in the Washington area stemming from the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure decision to shutter Walter Reed, which stunned the Washington region as well as Army medicine, particularly coming in the midst of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Four military hospitals in the Washington area — at Walter Reed, Bethesda, Andrews Air Force Base and Fort Belvoir — have been merged into two large facilities: a vastly expanded medical center at Bethesda and the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Fairfax County.

The Department of Defense estimates that the consolidation will save $140 million a year by eliminating redundancies. But the cost of consolidation has been far greater than the $988 million originally estimated by the Pentagon and now stands at $2.8 billion. The size and scope of the consolidation have increased in response to concerns that the new facilities would not provide the best care for wars’ wounded.

The consolidation has been meant as a test bed to integrate military medicine across the services. But it has been beset by tensions between the Army and Navy over control of the new facility.

While the Joint Task Force National Capital Region will have command over both hospitals, the Navy will oversee the administration at Bethesda, as will the Army at Fort Belvoir. Both are slated to become joint commands but no date has been set until differences can be settled.

“There will be unity of command,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general.

Merging two hospitals with storied histories and their staff with deep institutional cultures has not been easy. “This is a historic transformation, given that these are two icons of military medicine,” said Rear Adm. Matthew Nathan, the commander at Bethesda. “You can imagine the brand loyalty at Walter Reed and Bethesda.”

“My goal is not to homogenize those cultures,” Nathan added. “I want there to be friendly rivalries.”

Army doctors and nurses from Walter Reed are treating patients alongside Navy counterparts, although it is difficult to tell them apart once they put on their scrubs.

“In the OR, you have to ask people what service they are,” said Army Col. Charles Callahan, who was previously at Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir and is now the deputy commander at Bethesda.