Navy Medicine East Goes South

Navy Medicine East Goes South

By Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer 1st Class (Aviation Warfare) Russell C. Tafuri and Rod Duren, Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – The Commander of Navy Medicine East flew South for the week visiting Naval Hospital Pensacola and Navy Medicine assets at the Naval Construction Battalion Center Gulfport, Miss., one of the Pensacola hospital’s 11 branch health clinics; and homeport of the Atlantic Fleet’s Seabees.

Commander of Navy Medicine East, Rear Adm. Thomas R. Cullison, talks with Sailors at Naval Hospital Pensacola (May 23) and medical assets at Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) Gulfport, Miss., one of the Pensacola hospital’s 11 branch health clinics – across four states – one of the top four mobilization-demobilization medical processing sites across the country.

US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer 1st Class (Aviation Warfare) Russ Tafuri

Rear Adm. Thomas R. Cullison, Commander, Navy Medicine East, and Commander of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Va., visited with the base commander and health clinic officer May 22 regarding the clinic’s capabilities, resource requirements and response to surges in troop mobilization and demobilization in support of military operations world-wide.

Capt. Van Dobson’s base is home to four Mobile Construction Battalions, with a fifth on the way to the Mississippi Gulf Coast this fall; and also home of two Tri-Service training ‘A’ schools. Cmdr. Matt Grimes’ branch health clinic is one of four major Navy mobilization processing sites across the nation.

While in Gulfport, the admiral was briefed on remodeling and expansion of spaces at the Naval Branch Health Clinic; and of the 2008 location of a new Deployment Health Center which will provide an increase in capacity and staffing for five healthcare providers.

Following the visit, Cmdr. Grimes was beginning work on “amendments to our healthcare-requirement assessments …and preparing studies to see what other work that we need to be doing to help justify additional resources” for the Gulfport clinic.

“We made some progress on that … for down the road,” Grimes said.

While in Pensacola, on May 23, Cullison conducted an ‘Admiral’s Call’ question-and-answer brief with staff members of the hospital.

In opening remarks, he told Sailors – many of whom have deployed to areas such as Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, or the Detention Hospital at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – that “military medicine is doing fantastic job here (along the Gulf Coast) and in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The admiral told the mostly-corpsmen group that those who deploy or who “maintain the integrity of Navy Medicine” by looking after family members of deployed personnel were continuing to hold up military medicine’s end of the bargain.

The admiral was asked about ‘tax-free pay’ for those who serve at Guantanamo Bay. Naval Hospital Pensacola has been involved with the Joint Task Force operation in Cuba since November 2004.

“That’s a topic that’s been on the table and is being discussed,” he said.

The admiral also met with personnel from Pensacola’s Naval Operational Medicine Institute and cryptology school at the Center for Information Dominance on Corry Station. He also toured the under-construction Joint Ambulatory Care Clinic, an outpatient-clinic venture between the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs which is tentatively scheduled to open in the first half of 2008.

The Joint Ambulatory Care Clinic is located adjacent to Navy Hospital Pensacola on Corry Station. A small piece of the venture will include a new military health clinic for Corry Station staff and students, replacing the 1940s-era facility.