10-year anniversary of BRAC remembered by those who lived it

Courtesy Photo | Construction of San Antonio Military Medical Center's consolidated tower. Because of the 2005 BRAC initiative, SAMMC is now the largest inpatient health care facility in the Department of Defense and the only Level 1 trauma center serving 22 counties in South Texas and providing emergency services to 80,000 people annually. The hospital also serves as a medical readiness training platform for Army, Navy and Air Force personnel. (US Army Photo/Released)  

FORT SAM HOUSTON, TX, UNITED STATES

10.16.2015

Story by Lori Newman  

Brooke Army Medical Center Public Affairs   

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO, Texas - More than 10 years ago, on Sept. 15, 2005, President George W. Bush signed a letter approving the Base Realignment and Closure Commission’s recommendations.

In the beginning, the 2005 BRAC initiative received mixed reviews from military and civilians in San Antonio, but Army Medicine and Brooke Army Medical Center grew significantly with the directed changes.

The BRAC initiative called for the consolidation of all inpatient military healthcare services in San Antonio to one location. To accomplish this, the San Antonio Medical BRAC Integration Office or SAMBIO was created to oversee construction and renovations.

Brooke Army Medical Center staff members Christine Halder, Lean Six Sigma deployment director in the Business Operations Division, and Lu Ann Peralta, program manager in the Department of Nursing, were original members of the SAMBIO.

“When we started the planning for all the BRAC changes the SAMBIO was only three people, at our peak there were more than 100 of us,” said Halder.

Construction projects included a new 760,000-square-foot consolidated tower, renovations to nearly half the original hospital structure, a 5,000-space parking garage, central energy plant and the Fort Sam Houston Primary Care Clinic at a total cost of about $802.3 million.

The overarching goal during this whole process was not to have any impact on our patient care, Halder explained. “Probably one of the biggest challenges we had was developing the plans and implementing the resources to keep patient care going during that whole process,” she said.

“We literally coordinated hundreds of moves because some folks moved more than once,” Peralta said.

“We used the metaphor ‘building the plane while we were flying it,’ because we were moving people into spaces and transitioning while construction was going on. The mission was to do all of this without decrement to any of the services,” Halder said.

Initially the plan was to add two towers, an administrative tower and a clinical tower.

“Eventually they decided it would be better to have it in one footprint opposed to two,” Peralta said. “There was going to be two parking garages, but they were also consolidated into one.”

Through the BRAC process, the hospital known as Brooke Army Medical Center was renamed San Antonio Military Medical Center. However, BAMC remains the command component over SAMMC, the Center for the Intrepid, CPT Jennifer M. Moreno Primary Care Clinic, McWethy Troop Medical Clinic, Schertz Medical Home, Taylor Burk Clinic and now Westover Medical Home.

Because of the BRAC initiative, SAMMC is now the largest inpatient health care facility in the Department of Defense and the only Level 1 trauma center serving 22 counties in South Texas and providing emergency services to 80,000 people annually. The hospital also serves as a medical readiness training platform for Army, Navy and Air Force personnel.

There are currently 425 inpatient beds; 32 operating rooms; medical, pediatric and surgical subspecialty clinics; adult, neonatal and pediatric intensive care units; and a bone marrow transplant unit. BRAC also brought the prenatal care and labor and delivery mission to SAMMC.

There were many challenges along the way, including delays in construction sometimes due to unusual circumstances.

“Many times construction was halted because of unexploded ordnance,” Halder said. “But the best was when they found the mammoth bones,” she laughed.

While digging the foundation of the seven story tower construction workers discovered large bones, later determined to be from a very young mastodon or mammoth.

Both Halder and Peralta agree that despite the amount of work the SAMBIO faced, the experience and knowledge they gained from the project was rewarding.

“The opportunities I had at SAMBIO were the most fun I have ever had, in spite of the stress and the pace. It was a very complex project, but it truly was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Peralta said.

“When I walk around the building I think, gosh, we were here before the walls started going up. It’s really cool.”

• Date Taken: 10.16.2015
• Date Posted: 10.20.2015 12:23
• Story ID: 179402
• Location: FORT SAM HOUSTON, TX, US