Congress is prepared to delay the transfer of thousands of military personnel around the Washington region to ensure that new medical facilities in Virginia and Maryland are fully prepared to receive wounded U.S. troops before Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District is shut down. The shuffling of military and medical personnel between Walter Reed and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda and a new hospital at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County is part of a consolidation of military installations intended to save the Pentagon money.
More than 30,000 workers are scheduled to move locally by Sept. 15, but medical facilities at two of the sites are still being built and may not be ready by then to receive wounded troops.
Fearing a public backlash if wounded soldiers are not provided with prompt and complete medical care, the House Armed Services Committee added a provision to the 2012 defense authorization bill allowing Defense Secretary Robert Gates to delay some relocations beyond the Sept. 15 deadline.
| Mark Center move will be slowed |
| Only 2,000 of the 6,400 defense workers being relocated to offices at the Mark Center in Alexandria will actually move to the new site by the Sept. 15 deadline, officials said. The rest are scheduled to move by January 2012, according to Andrea Morris, Arlington BRAC coordinator. Local officials are pushing for a longer delay to allow road improvements to be made. |
“With respect to the state of the facilities, the Defense Department is in the best position to judge whether or not those facilities are up and ready,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., whose district includes the Bethesda medical center.
Operating rooms at Bethesda won’t be complete until 2012, a committee aide said. And the in-patient facilities at Fort Belvoir won’t be ready until August at the earliest, giving workers only a month, perhaps less, to move in, the aide said.
“While the department is facing scheduling challenges in a few cases, we are working diligently to ensure we satisfy our [relocation] obligations,” said Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, spokeswoman for Gates.
Van Hollen is urging the Pentagon to evaluate whether the new local medical facilities will be ready in time to receive patients from Walter Reed by September.
“We do want to make sure that there’s a smooth transition,” Van Hollen said. “If there are any questions about whether or not we can meet that standard, we need to know.”
The transfer of wounded soldiers from Walter Reed to Bethesda and Fort Belvoir will mean the end of the road for the troubled District hospital, where a scandal over deteriorating conditions in 2007 forced the resignation of the Army secretary. The committee is eager to avoid another scandal involving military hospitals in the D.C. region, the aide said.
The cost of replacing Walter Reed was estimated at $200 million in 2005, when decisions were being made about what military facilities to close or consolidate. More recent estimates put the price at $2 billion.
