Blanchfield Army Community Hospital Public Affairs
Fort Campbell, KY – Beneficiaries assigned to Blanchfield Army Community Hospital’s Gold Army Medical Home will resume seeing their healthcare providers in their original clinic space located within the hospital’s “C” Building, 3rd Floor, November 30th.
All patients entering and departing the hospital should continue using the hospital’s “A” entrance. Since March, all family and retiree primary care services operating out of the hospital relocated to Byrd Soldier and Family Medical Home, near Gate 10.
“Blanchfield Army Community Hospital took aggressive measures to ensure the safety of all patients entering the hospital to abstain from the possible spread of COVID-19 to patients, visitors and staff,” said Col. Patrick T. Birchfield, Blanchfield Army Community Hospital’s commander.
“One of the measures we took early in our implementation process in safely dealing with COVID-19 is moving all primary care services out of the main hospital to outlying clinics,” Birchfield stated.
Moving these clinics out of the hospital enabled the complete lock down of the “C” Building entrance, which served as the main outpatient service entrance to the hospital. The only patient entrance for primary and specialty care services since this move is through the “A” Building entrance, where screeners can reroute patients with COVID-19 Coronavirus symptoms.
Implementation of these procedures proved extremely successful to control the spread of the virus to patients, visitors and staff.
“Now that we have developed systems in place to safely provide primary, specialty and surgical care to our patients during the pandemic, we are ready to begin moving primary care services originally located in the hospital back into the building.”
According to Birchfield, this process will not occur all at once. “This is a slow and deliberate process with safety precautions in place before movement occurs.”
By moving the Gold Army Medical Home personnel and patients back to their original hospital clinical space, it opens up room for recently hired providers to provide care at Byrd Soldier and Family Medical Home. Blanchfield, like all military treatment facilities, is impacted by military personnel moves which typically occur during the summer season; however, with COVID-19 Coronavirus many of these moves occurred later when travel restrictions were lifted. The newly hired personnel will help fill the personnel gaps experienced.
“We are thankful in how our patient population has remained positive and flexible as we aggressively continue to address the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Birchfield. “We encourage all our beneficiaries and our partners within the surrounding communities to continue to practice CDC recommended safety precautions to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and all viruses this fall and winter.”
