Air Forc
e and Army officials, including the surgeon general of each service, broke ground Dec. 8 in San Antonio, Tex., on the new $724 million construction and renovation project to unify the Air Force’s Wilford Hall Medical Center and the Brooke Army Medical Center. This expansion is set for completion in September 2011. It is occurring as a result of BRAC 2005, which called for the consolidation of Wilford Hall and Brooke into one medical center, to be called the San Antonio Military Medical Center, with two integrated campuses. Wilford Hall is now known as SAMMC-South, while Brooke is now called SAMMC-North. Among the changes under the expansion project, SAMMC-North will add a new hospital tower with emergency department, inpatient floors, clinics, and new administrative space. It will also get a new multi-level parking garage and a central energy plant. About 186,000 square feet of SAMMC-South will be renovated. SAMMC-North will become the inpatient tertiary care center, while SAMMC-South will serve as the ambulatory care center. Once the project is complete, the Air Force and Army will jointly staff and operate SAMMC. (San Antonio report by Maria Gallegos)
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.