The future Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is currently under construction at Bethesda. Once it is complete, it will be a world-renown military medical facility. Steps are being taken right now to place personnel in the correct leadership positions to ensure the success of the new facility.
Cmdr. Brooks Cash, chief of Gastroenterology Division and Colon Health Initiative, was recently appointed as Integrated Chief of Medicine for the new WRNMMC.
Moving forward in the BRAC process has created the need to functionally integrate all clinical and clinical support departments at the two medical centers. With the announcement comes the reinforced commitment and shared vision of leadership from both commands.
As the integrated chief of medicine, Cash said he will be working to coordinate the medical sub specialties between the two hospitals. Bethesda has been without this position for several years. In the past, it has been dealt with in a structure of directorships that reported to the director of medical services.
‘‘The two hospitals have two different organizational structures ... this position will serve as the liaison between the department heads of the medical subspecialties and the leadership of the hospital,” Cash said.
During his application process, Cash had to go through several ‘‘eye opening” interviews, he said. Once full integration is complete, it will be Cash’s job to help and mentor several hundred employees in their job processes.
‘‘It’s a much larger scale job, it gave me a great deal of insight to how complicated this enterprise is going to be, but also the great potential that we’ve got,” Cash said.
‘‘It’s a very exciting place to be ... I’m committed to making this a world-class health care facility,” he said. ‘‘Both places are very important to me ... I have a great deal of affection and a great sense of responsibility to making my part of this whole project turn out well.”
Cash’s previous duty assignments include Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth and a previous assignment to Bethesda. He has worked in both the internal medicine and gastroenterology departments.
Cash is looking forward to where the integration process will take the clinics because it will benefit patients and medical personnel alike with the amount of medical knowledge shared amongst the medical facilities, he said. It may be an extended process, but in the end it will be important.
‘‘I am most looking forward to the synergy that I think is going to come from working together with the staff from Bethesda and the staff from Walter Reed,” Cash said. ‘‘It’s going to be a hard road ... but at the end of the day I think we are going to come out with something we are all going to be very proud of.”
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