Emerging leaders with the Greater Killeen Chamber of Commerce visited the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center to learn about hospital operations and how it serves the surrounding Central Texas community April 19.
The Leadership Killeen group also toured the hospital inpatient and emergency departments to receive an overview of services, capabilities and readiness support to Fort Hood and the surrounding community.
The tour concluded with a visit to the Intrepid Spirit Center where Soldiers are treated for traumatic brain injuries suffered during their service.
“We offer full-scale primary care in our family medicine and Soldier center care clinics,” said Dr. Kirk Eggleston, chief, family and community medicine. “We have approximately 90,000 beneficiaries between our hospital and it’s six outpatient clinics. We have the biggest beneficiary population as far as health care and enrollment numbers of all Army installations.”
A chief concern of the group was whether patients could be transferred to CRDAMC from surrounding community partner hospitals.
According to James McPherren, registered nurse and chief of nursing operations, “The short answer is sometimes, because federal law prevents us from bringing in non-Defense Department beneficiaries.”
However, during our early battle with COVID, we made plans and executed a movement that allowed an expansion of the hospital’s normal 157 beds to over 200, explained McPherren
“Because we couldn’t bring surrounding community patients here, we sent our people to the fight. Some Soldiers went to New York, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston to provide health care to save as many people as we could,” said McPherren.
The group found that not only does the hospital provide support throughout the central Texas region with its inpatient and outpatient services, but that the emergency department and emergency medical service response teams do as well.
“Occasionally, we will deploy for Bell and Coryell counties,” said Holly Galiana, paramedic, emergency medical services. “If there’s an incident on the highway that those two municipalities need help with, we’ll go out and help transport and take care of patients.”
We provide life-saving care until they get to the hospital, and we try to make that difference for our patients until we can get them to more definitive care, she said.
CRDAMC is a Level III trauma center, which comprises a trauma surgeon, orthopedic surgery and other specialties to treat certain levels of trauma.
This tour is our health care and community of life day, which is a day our Leadership Killeen group visits health care partners in the community, added Rebekah Moon, vice president of investor services, GKCC, and we have not visited CRDAMC, since it opened in 2016.
“This experience of seeing how you serve our military and knowing that civilians that need Level III trauma service can come into the emergency room is fantastic,” she said. “To see the level of health care that you’re offering to our community is remarkable.”