Col. Kenneth G. Canestrini, commander of the DeWitt Health Care Network, oversees a Fort Belvoir hospital that last week was named the best in the Army for patient care. DeWitt is also a hospital in transition, set to be replaced by a new 120-bed facility that will absorb part of Walter Reed Medical Center’s functions when it closes by 2011.
What led to this award?
The award is more of a performance award that the [Army] surgeon general presented based upon 12 or so different criteria: The biggest percentage, weightedwise, was how well the DeWitt Community Health Care Network had done in wellness measures. … So that’s an emphasis on [pneumonia vaccines], on cervical cancer screening, colonoscopy, mammograms, etc.
When you took command in July 2006, what was your focus?
When I came in 18 months ago, I was focused on customer service, courtesy interaction with patients, access to care, reducing all of the friction points around patients getting into the system. I’m in a 50-year-old facility, so my other focus was on its cleanliness, appearance maintenance, those kind of things that we could do to clean things up and have a more presentable appearance.
With the new facility, what are you going to be able to do that you couldn’t do before?
In a nutshell, when we open up the new hospital 2 1/2, three years from now, the whole delivery system in the National Capital Area will change, because the new DeWitt will have the only inpatient care provided south of the Potomac for the National Capital Area. … We’ll go up to about 55 clinical services, that’s about 33 that we don’t have. The biggest plus is there’s so much specialty care, subspecialty care that we will be adding on.
Who was your competition for winning this award?
The competition is the other 35 medical treatment facilities that are in the Army Medical Department.
