WRAMC - Modern Era

WRAMC - Modern Era. Former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. To keep pace with the advances in medical technology and consolidate patient care in one facility, congressional funds were procured for a new modern hospital facility on the WRAMC campus in 1967. Construction of the New Hospital commenced in 1972, was completed in 1977 and was later dedicated as the Heaton Pavilion, for Lieutenant General Leonard D. Heaton, commanding officer at WRAMC from 1953 to 1959. Built in the modern Brutalist architectural style of concrete construction, the new hospital functioned as a self-contained unit with 28 acres of floor space, 1280 patient beds, 16 operating rooms, two courtyards, an electrical generating plant and an underground parking garage., Over the last century, countless American soldiers and their dependents sought medical care at WRAMC. Veterans from both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Persian Gulf War, and conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq were treated and rehabilitate at the facility. WRAMC's pioneering work in the rehabilitation of amputees and development of prosthetics used the latest in computer and video-monitoring systems to enhance patient care and prosthetic design., After 102 years of service, operations at WRAMC ceased in 2011 as a result of a congressional panel recommendation to consolidate military medical care in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, creating the joint forces Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on the existing Naval Medical Center campus. The name Walter Reed remains synonymous with the highest excellence in Army health care, medical education and medical research. The legacy of WRAMC, as a globally respected medical facility, lives on in the histories of the three great institutions it contained, in the discoveries and medical advances achieved by the medical staff, and in the care and rehabilitation of America's soldiers.