"Walter Reed to close after more than a century" July 23, 2011|Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army’s flagship hospital where privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more than a century.
Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s war wounded from World War I to today have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan....
The storied hospital, which opened in 1909, was scarred by a 2007 scandal about substandard living conditions on its grounds for wounded troops in outpatient care and the red tape they faced. It led to improved care for the wounded, at Walter Reed and throughout the military. By then, however, plans were moving forward to close Walter Reed’s campus.
Two years earlier, a government commission, noting that Walter Reed was showing its age, voted to close the facility and consolidate its operations with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and a hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., to save money.
Former and current patients and staff members will say goodbye at a ceremony Wednesday....
“For many of the staff members, even though they know that this is the future of the military health system, in a way, it’s still like losing your favorite uncle, and so there is a certain amount of mourning that is going on and it is an emotional time,’’ said Col. Norvell Coots, commander of the Walter Reed Health Care System.
The new facility will be called the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It will consolidate many of Walter Reed’s current offerings with the Navy hospital.
“Frankly, I will say it’s with a heavy heart that Walter Reed closes. I don’t know. I know that there was a process for that decision, but we’ve lost a great, important part of history,’’ said Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the former president.
There are countless pieces of history throughout the campus....
Presidents now are sent to Bethesda for treatment because it’s considered more secure, said Sanders Marble, senior historian with the Office of Medical History at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
The hospital was named to honor Maj. Walter Reed, an Army physician who treated troops and American Indians on the frontier. Among his medical achievements was life-saving research that proved that yellow fever was spread by mosquito. He died in 1902 at age 51 of complications related to appendicitis with a friend and colleague, Lt. Col. William C. Borden, treating him.
The original redbrick hospital had about 80 beds, but inpatient capacity grew by the thousands during the wars of the last century. Today, it treats about 775,000 outpatients annually, and has an inpatient load of about 150. It wasn’t just service members and military retirees treated at the hospital over the decades, but their families, too. Countless babies were born at the hospital into the 1990s.
Rehabilitation for the wounded, including care for amputees, has been an important part of the mission since it opened. The wounded commonly spend a year or longer at the hospital now, although they are more quickly moved to outpatient care.
Despite all the warm feelings, a Washington Post investigation in 2007 uncovered shoddy living conditions in an outpatient ward known as Building 18. Troops were living among black mold and mouse droppings while trying to fend for themselves as they battled a complex bureaucracy of paperwork related to the disability evaluation system.
The report drew scrutiny of all aspects of care offered to the nation’s wounded. The scandal embarrassed the Army and the Bush administration, and led to the firings of some military leaders.
Afterward, some in Congress pushed for the Pentagon to change course and keep Walter Reed open, but....
When are we going to change course and get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya?
I mean ALL OUT, not the TALK of the LAST FIVE YEARS!
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