FORT BELVOIR, Va. - Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support team members helped ensure a seamless transition when patients at Washington, D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center moved to one of two new locations earlier this fall.
As a result of Base Realignment and Closure 2005 recommendations, patients moved to either the newly named Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., or the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia when WRAMC closed its doors.
DLA Troop Support’s medical supply chain managers began planning for the move more than two years ago by partnering with the Joint Task Force Capital Region Medical team to ensure uninterrupted support for the new hospitals, said James Grugan, DLA Troops Support Medical’s north region customer relationship management cell chief.
The supply chain provides day-to-day medical supplies, drugs and equipment for patient care.
Andrew Wechter, chief of the medical capital equipment division, said his group purchased about 50 medical systems, valued at more than $35 million, to outfit the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.
The systems purchased included magnetic resonance scanners, digital radiographic systems, digital imaging network picture archiving and communications systems, physiological monitoring systems and ultrasound scanners, he said.
“The overall support was a good success story,” Wechter said. “Anytime you supply that many high-tech medical equipment items in a relatively short period of time, it is a success.”
When the planning began, Grugan said, his team participated in monthly meetings at WRAMC and Bethesda and a summit at Fort Belvoir to ensure that medical treatment continued at the new facilities.
DLA Troop Support also ensured that in closing WRAMC, all outstanding prime vendor orders were closed out and there were no outstanding payments due, Grugan said.
DLA Troop Support Medical employee Maryann Bickel serves as the lead DLA project officer, overseeing 21 Army Medical Materiel Agreement Program locations. She assisted with the closeout of WRAMC through a series of on-site inventories to account for all DLA stock at the hospital and the transfer of those stocks to the Army.
From the onset, Grugan said the goal was to ensure there would be no interruption of supply support for all the facilities impacted by the transition.
“Our team will continue with the account management of the two new hospitals that resulted from the BRAC of Walter Reed,” he said. “We will continue our supply chain support, and we will continue to provide our customers the excellent service they deserve.”