Fort Belvoir Community Hospital



Fort Belvoir Community Hospital is the newest military treatment facility operated by the Department of Defense. Located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, south of Washington D.C., the hospital is part of an integrated health care system under the Joint Task Force National Capital Region Medical (JTF CapMed) providing world-class health care to the nation’s service members and their families.

The $1.03 billion, 1.3 million-square-foot facility replaced DeWitt Army Community Hospital located on Fort Belvoir and integrated various aspects of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., officially in August 2011 in accordance with 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Law.

History
The former DeWitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., for which Fort Belvoir Community Hospital replaced, was named in honor of Brigadier General Wallace DeWitt, Sr., (1878–1949), a surgeon who served in World War I and World War II.

The DeWitt Army Community Hospital opened in 1957, having cost $4.5 million to construct. It was the second of nine hospitals planned by the Army during the building program following the Korean War. DeWitt was a 46-bed Joint Commission-accredited facility and the only military inpatient facility in Northern Virginia. It was the center of the DeWitt Health Care Network, which featured the Andrew Rader Army Health Clinic at Fort Myer, Fort A.P. Hill, and the Family Health Centers of Woodbridge and Fairfax in Virginia.

As part of a Base Realignment and Closure announcement on May 13, 2005, the Department of Defense proposed closing Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) and merging it with the National Naval Medical Center located in Bethesda, MD, and DeWitt Army Community Hospital. Moving nearly half of Walter Reed’s services to DeWitt would greatly expand the hospital’s mission. In November 2007, ground was broken on Fort Belvoir’s South Post golf course for the new Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

As part of the effort to transform service specific medical facilities into joint service facilities, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital’s staff includes Army, Navy, and Air Force medical personnel, making it one of the first joint medical facilities within the Department of Defense.

Structure
The state-of-the-art, 120-bed facility - designed by HDR, Inc. - is one of the first military treatment facilities to use evidence-based design principles to increase patient outcomes, decrease recovery times and to maximize provider and patient safety. Nature and its healing effects also play a large role in the hospital’s design and is a heavy theme throughout the facility’s five pavilions – Meadows, Sunrise, Oaks, Eagle and River.

Fort Belvoir’s new hospital has a seven-story main structure, flanked on each side by two outpatient clinic areas providing both primary and specialty care. In total, it consists of five total buildings, 3500 parking spaces, 44 clinics, expanded pharmacy services, 430 exam rooms, 10 operating rooms, two DaVinci surgical systems, two linear accelerator cancer/oncology systems, and one of the military’s only dedicated substance abuse programs. The expanded outpatient specialty care brings the care closer to home and reduces the need for patients to drive 30+ miles to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Fort Belvoir Community Hospital inpatient services have expanded threefold in volume and encompass a full spectrum of medical specialties, once more placing advanced care closer to beneficiaries in Northern Virginia (National Capital Region).

Evidence-Based Design
Fort Belvoir Community Hospital is at the forefront of evidence-based health care design. The facility design creates an environment that is therapeutic, supportive of family involvement and efficient for staff performance. It integrates research-based architectural design and holistic health care practices that result in improved patient outcomes, privacy, comfort and safety for both patients and staff.

The design process for the new facility incorporated many evidence-based design concepts. One of which is nature’s healing power – each of the five pavilions is inspired by nature, from the color scheme and the floor tile patterns to the wall murals and pictures.

Evidence-Based Design Features:
 * Healing Gardens
 * Maximizing natural light
 * Resilient rubber flooring
 * Shortened walking distance for staff
 * Enhanced wayfinding and navigation methods
 * Acoustically adsorbent finish materials for a better healing environment
 * Individual patient lighting
 * Thermal controls
 * Carbon dioxide monitoring,
 * Increase sustainability efforts
 * Green power and energy conservation technology
 * Single-patient rooms
 * Integrated bedside IT services
 * Electronic medical records
 * Self-service information/wayfinding kiosks,

Perhaps most noticeable are the four large swoops atop Meadow, Sunrise, Eagle and River Pavilions. The swoops pay homage to Fort Belvoir’s large Bald Eagle population and Eagle preserve wetlands near the Potomac River. Functionally, the swoops collect rainwater and funnel it to large cisterns built under the facility. The cisterns are used to irrigate the gardens and other landscaping areas on the medical campus. The swoops also protect heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment from weather, which increases equipment efficiency and lifespan.

New Services:
 * Adult Oncology Services (Cancer Care)
 * Adult Chemotherapy Infusion
 * Radiation Oncology/Linear Accelerators
 * Intensive Care Unit
 * Inpatient Pediatric
 * Breast Center
 * Nuclear Medicine
 * Laser Eye Center
 * Dental Clinic Services/Oral Surgery
 * Aquatics Therapy
 * Chiropractic Services
 * Pain Clinic
 * Rheumatology
 * Vascular
 * Cardiac Catheter Lab
 * Neurology
 * Endocrinology
 * Pulmonary Clinic
 * Patient Resource Library
 * Infectious Disease Clinic
 * Interventional Radiology
 * Department of Veterans Affairs Health Clinic
 * Executive Medicine Clinic
 * Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Facility
 * Multidisciplinary Interventional Services
 * Level II Nursery (up from Level I)
 * Increased Medical & Surgical Beds
 * Behavioral Health (adult and child/adolescent)

Enhanced Services:
 * Emergency Service
 * Dermatology
 * Ambulatory Surgery
 * Urology
 * Women’s Health Center
 * Cardiology
 * Ear, Nose and Throat
 * Ophthalmology
 * Health Professions Education

Visits/Capacity
Department of Defense officials project the eligible beneficiary population will increase to more than 220,000 with approximately 40 percent of the expanded health care system enrolled population consisting of retirees and their family members.

The anticipated outpatient workload is expected to grow to more than 600,000 visits per year in primary, specialty and ancillary clinics.

Selected specialty clinics such as Cardiology, Medical Oncology, Pulmonary, Radiation Oncology and Urology alone will generate approximately 54,000 appointments per year. The hospital’s Labor and Delivery service delivered 104 babies in its first month of operations.