About 8,000 family members of active-duty soldiers stationed at Fort Benning will soon have the option of using a new medical clinic at Brookstone Centre in north Columbus.
The facility, to be called North Columbus Medical Home, should open by next March at 1100 Brookstone Centre Parkway, Terry Beckwith, spokeswoman for Martin Army Community Hospital, said Monday.
“With the influx of the 20,000 people that came with BRAC, we have had to reexamine where people are going to get their care because, obviously, we can’t take care of everybody at Martin Army,” she said. “That’s why we’re building a new hospital.”
The federal Base Realignment and Closure process in 2005 mandated the relocation of the U.S. Army Armor School to Fort Benning. Congressional funding followed in 2008 for a replacement hospital on the post, which is situated on Columbus’ southern and eastern border.
But the new and expanded $350 million hospital, which will replace the 1950s-era Martin Army Community Hospital, isn’t scheduled for completion until October 2014. Thus the need for more family-practice space to treat the post’s population growth, a large number of which resides off the installation.
“We’re looking at ZIP code demographics and patients that live close to that location out at Brookstone,” Beckwith said. “They’re going to be given the option to enroll to get their care closer to home, so they won’t have to drive out to Martin Army for everything.”
The clinic is locating in 10,810 square feet of space in an office building that also houses the headquarters for Flournoy Development Co., owner of the structure and a major apartment developer in the Southeast.
Military patients who use the facility will have access to full outpatient services, Beckwith said. There also will be radiological services and a pharmacy on site. It will have a staff of 30.
“Letters are going out to everyone,” she said of prospective patients. “They’ll have the option to opt out if they don’t want to have their care there.”
Any major treatment, including emergencies and baby deliveries, will be handled by Martin Army and other local hospitals.
Beckwith said the off-post clinic is an offshoot of the military’s “Patient-Centered Medical Home” program that was adopted about three years ago. Because of BRAC growth at various U.S. installations, at least 10 such satellite clinics have opened off military installations.
Design work on the new clinic is now under way, with the former office space having been gutted, she said. The facility is expected to be a long-term tenant in the building.
“They’re in there right now doing the refit to put in the patient waiting areas, the central check-in desk, the lab, the refill pharmacy and, of course, the patient exam rooms,” Beckwith said.
Brookstone Centre, located near the Bradley Park Crossing shopping area and upscale housing areas, is a quiet office park with a mix primarily of corporations, physician and accounting offices, as well as a hotel. Its buildout began in the 1980s.
“It’s got a few sites left. There aren’t many, maybe four to six,” said Jim Brannock, an associate broker with Jordan Hart Commercial Services, which handled the leasing of the medical facility to the military.
The new Martin Army Community Hospital, meanwhile, is in various stages of completion, according to Tim Morris, project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer office in Savannah, Ga.
Some earthwork began about a year ago on the 745,000-square-foot hospital, which is near the old 393,000-square-foot facility off Marne Road. An official groundbreaking by the U.S. Army Medical Command took place in April of this year.
Huntsville, Ala.-based Turner Construction Co. is building the 70-bed hospital, which includes two clinic wings, a hospital tower and two parking garages.
“We are designing it as we build it,” said Morris, who estimated about 70 percent of the hospital tower and clinics have been designed, while about 5 percent of those structures have been constructed. About 20 percent of the parking garages are finished.
“It’s on schedule,” said Morris, explaining that the $350 million price tag is a firm fixed contract. “Unless we change something or we add something, the price stays the same.”
The Fort Benning hospital is currently the largest active military construction project being overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Savannah District, said public affairs officer Billy Birdwell. He acknowledged that the pace of military construction is now slowing.
“You’ve got to keep in mind that some of the things that we have been working on that have given us such a large buildup lately have come to completion,” he said. “BRAC, for instance, is over for the most part. So we’re not going to be doing that anymore. The transformation of the Army … is coming to completion. It’s just logical that there will be less because those big, huge programs are about to be completed.”
