Healthcare for all except our Military and Veterans. Fort Jackson is the largest and most active Initial Entry training Center in the U.S. Army, training 34 percent of all Soldiers and 69 percent of the women entering the Army each year.
Via The State
The U.S. Army may close Moncrief Army Community Hospital at Fort Jackson, according to Maj. Gen. Bradley Becker, the fort’s commander.
Becker said that the Army medical command contacted him this week and told him that it is considering closing the hospital or drastically cutting back service at the facility, which is the main health care provider for the 72,000 soldiers who are trained there each year and the fort’s 7,000 military and civilian employees. The State reported a year ago that Moncrief had roughly 700 employees.
Medical care for the recruits would be transferred to local hospitals, the general said. Each recruit would be required to be accompanied to off-base hospitals by two drill sergeants, according to Army regulations.
“That would be good for the hospitals,” Becker told The State. “But it would cause me staffing issues. And of course there is the loss of jobs.”
Becker said he expected to be briefed further by medical command next week. Efforts to reach a spokesman for Moncrief were unsuccessful.
In addition to serving Fort Jackson soldiers, Dorn VA Medical Center, just a few miles away, has turned to Moncrief as a pressure relief valve when services are backed up at Dorn. For instance, when Dorn had to shut down its operating rooms because of a ventilation problem this year, some of the cases were shifted to Moncrief.[…]
Earlier in the week Becker told The State that the number of new soldiers trained at Fort Jackson, the nation’s largest basic training installation, would drop to about 17,000 a year from 45,000 if worst-case staffing cuts go forward.
Another 27,000 soldiers receiving advanced training in tenant missions such as the drill sergeant school and the chaplains school would also be heavily affected, Becker said.
The sequester would force the Army to shrink to 420,000 soldiers in 2019 from 518,000 today, Becker said. That would make it impossible for the Army to meet the nation’s strategic goal of winning a war in one theater while holding an enemy at bay in another, he said.