Base Hospital Now Clinic In Thrift Push Outpatient Surgery Performed; Operations Requiring Overnight Stay Go To Sacred Heart

Fairchild Air Force Base turned its hospital into a “super clinic,” a move that its commander says makes better use of tax dollars and offers better care for patients.

Fairchild’s clinic expanded its day-surgery facilities during a recent upgrading of the hospital building, said Col. Craig Hinman, commander of the 92nd Medical Group. Operations requiring an overnight stay or longer are being done by military physicians at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

The base analyzed its services during last year’s $11 million remodeling project. Surgical patients were being sent to Sacred Heart for much of the year because of the construction.

The Fairchild serves about 4,500 personnel and their families.

Most base patients required operations that allowed them to be sent home the same day as the surgery. Continuing to use the downtown hospital for the relatively few complicated surgeries just made economic sense, Hinman said.

“When my surgeons are operating downtown, they’re not as limited in what they can do,” he said.

Sacred Heart had the staff with special training, who could care for those patients after the complicated operations.

Operating rooms at Fairchild were remodeled for same-day surgeries, and patient wards were remodeled to expand the clinic.

“We prepared ourselves to be a super clinic,” Hinman said.

Military hospitals around the country are being reviewed for possible cost savings. A report in this week’s “Air Force Times” said Fairchild is on the list to become a clinic, but in a sense, that’s already happened, Hinman said.

Whether further cuts will force Fairchild to move all of its surgeries downtown will depend on future budgets, Hinman said.

Change is always a shock, and some retirees will probably miss “the good old days” when they could have surgery at the base, he said.

“You have to remember that the good old days involved some pretty run-down facilities,” Hinman said. The expanded clinic allows military physicians to help prevent illness as well as treat it.

, DataTimes