William Beaumont Army Medical Center is a Department of Defense medical facility located in El Paso, Texas. It provides comprehensive care to all beneficiaries including active duty military, their family members, and retirees. The hospital is located in the Central/Northeastern part of El Paso. At present, WBAMC is the closest hospital to the Northeast, and provides billable emergency room services for Northeast El Paso. The hospital itself is very large, and contains a rather sizable Veterans Affairs Office for former military members who are in need of medical treatment.
Today
The Fort Bliss Replacement Hospital complex held a dry-in ceremony 12 July 2017. A dry-in is a construction milestone which signals that weather-sensitive construction can begin in the interior of the hospital. The new hospital complex will be on East Fort Bliss.
The William Beaumont Army Medical Center (WBAMC) is one of the many health care institutions affiliated with the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine which is also located in El Paso, Texas. WBAMC is also a participating hospital for medical residents from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), Bethesda, MD. The current commander of WBAMC is Colonel Erik Rude.
History
WBAMC is named for Army surgeon William Beaumont (1785-1853), the "Father of Gastric Physiology".
The buildings from the "Old Fort Bliss" to include the Fort Bliss Fort Hospital (1893) were added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1972.
The William Beaumont Army Medical Center (WBAMC), formerly the William Beaumont General Hospital (WBGH), is situated northwest of Fort Bliss’ main cantonment area, between Fred Wilson Road and Hayes Avenue. The hospital has its beginnings in Fort Bliss during the 1850s. After several earlier moves, Fort Bliss moved to its permanent location at Lanoria Mesa in 1893 and Building 8 (now the Fort Bliss Inspector General's Office) became the hospital. In 1916, the hospital moved to Building 1 (presently the Fort Bliss Directorate of Resource Management).
The construction of WBGH’s 48 buildings in 1920-21 signaled the beginning of Fort Bliss’s role as a major military medical center. WBGH was one of the Army's five original general hospitals. Over the next two decades WBGH served as both Fort Bliss’s station hospital and as a general hospital for the western portion of the Army’s 8th Service Command. The hospital made of tile and stucco opened July 2, 1921, with a bed capacity for 403 patients.On staff were six medical officers, two nurses and 30 medical corpsmen. WBGH's original mision was to provide general medical care to border patrol troops stationed at Fort Bliss. By the 1930's, however, the hospital was serving the entire western portion of the Army's Eighth Corps area, providing health care to soldiers stationed at posts in Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas.
During World War II, WBGH expanded to include 174 buildings and a crowded 4,064 beds. This included the 1,000 beds at Building 1 and another 750 beds at Biggs Air Force Base, now Biggs Army Air Field. Its capabilities also expanded as the hospital began providing specialized medical care to wounded soldiers returning from all theaters of the war. In December 1943, the plastic surgery clinic was opened.
During early 1945, approximately 6,000 inpatients were treated. In addition, a military school for medical technicians offered specialized training in surgical, dental, laboratory, X-ray, pharmacy, and veterinary procedures. The hospital had a fully equipped physical therapy and occupational therapy center. Also, the artificial eye clinic was opened. Later, the hospital expanded into a neuro-psychiatric treatment and orthopedic surgery center. Following the war, WBGH continued to serve the medical needs of Fort Bliss and surrounding military installations until the Army’s needs outgrew the capacity of the hospital. During the war, the William Beaumont General Hospital trained approximately 16,000 medical technicians, including over a thousand WAC recruits. The hospital also became a specialty center for plastic surgery, ophthalmic surgery, neuropsychiatry, and deep radiation therapy. In the last year of the war alone, some 26,358 patients received medical treatment at the hospital.
William Beaumont General Hospital was one of only ten, of the Army's sixty-three, general hospitals retained after World War II. Besides providing medical care to returning wounded soldiers during the conflicts in both Korea and Vietnam, the hospital also provided general medicine and surgical services to veterans and personnel at Fort Bliss and other regional military installations.
Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Charles C. Pixley, the hospital commander from September 1975 through December 1976, was promoted to lieutenant general in 1977 and became the Surgeon General of the Army.
In 1969, the Army began construction of a new, 12-story hospital to the west of the WBGH area. Completed in 1972, the new facility became known as the William Beaumont Army Medical Center. Although designed for 611 beds, by the early 1980s the hospital had a capacity of 463. The Omar N. Bradley building, an addition to the west-side of the main hospital, was opened in 1982. This facility provides an additional 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of clinical and administrative space. Today, the hospital has a bed capacity for more than 150 patients. However, during contingencies, the hospital can expand for 373 patients. As the Southwest’s major regional Army medical center, this modern facility now provides medical care to active and retired military personnel and their dependents in the three-state region of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
November 1995, WBAMC became one of the largest buildings in El Paso with another 254,000 square feet (23,600Â m2) of floor space for the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care Center. Now, the WBAMC complex has more than one million square feet of floor space for patient care and administrative duties.
Commanding Officers
New Facility
The new WBAMC facility remains under construction with target completion date of 2019.
Unit Insignia
The design of the WBAMC unit insignia symbolizes some of the highlights of the medical career of Dr. William Beaumont, the Center's namesake. The colors white and maroon are traditional to the US Army Medical Department and the maltese cross comes from the Knights Hospitallers of medieval times as a symbol of the medical profession. The fleur-de-lis pointing north refers to Dr. Beaumont's assignment in 1820 to the Northern Michigan outpost of Fort Mackinac and to the young French-Canadian whom he treated there for a stomach wound which never closed, presenting Beaumont with a window through which he could study the workings of the human stomach; this incident is symbolized by the circular window at center of the cross, and the world wide acclaim he received for his work is signified by the gold rays of the background. The Center's location in El Paso, Texas is symbolized by the vertical arm of the cross passing between the stylized mountains (in reference to the English translation of El Paso as "the pass") and terminating upon the blue wave which represents the Rio Grande.
Awards
- WBAMC was recognized as the first Military Treatment Facility (MTF) in the state of Texas to be qualified for the Immunization Action Coalition’s (IAC) Hepatitis B Birth Dose Honor Roll.
- WBAMC was recognized as an Army Safety and Occupational Health Star site, becoming the first Army Medical Center in the Continental United States to receive the title.
- WBAMC weight-loss surgery service designated as a Center of Excellence
Famous Patients
- Omar N. Bradley, the last American five-star general, lived during his retirement at a special residence at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center.
- William O. Wooldridge, the first Sergeant Major of the Army was treated at WBAMC
- Several of the Prisoner of War (POWs) from the 2003 invasion of Iraq were treated at WBAMC.
See also
- MEDCOM
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
- Paul L. Foster School of Medicine
References
External links
- William Beaumont Army Medical Center, official website
- Paul L. Foster School of Medicine
- William Beaumont Army Medical Center on Facebook
This article contains information that originally came from US Government publications and websites and is in the public domain.
