PENDLETON HOSPITAL RIBBON CUT OFFICIALS CELEBRATE OPENING OF PENDLETON HOSPITAL

New facility was Navy’s largest project using federal stimulus funds

By Gretel C. Kovach 12:01 A.M. FEB. 2, 2014

Navy and Marine Corps officials celebrated the recent opening of the new Camp Pendleton hospital with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday.

The $456 million facility that replaced the old hospital at Lake O’Neill has been in operation since Dec. 15, providing standard hospital care for the base, including delivery of babies, immunizations and casts for broken bones.

A staff of about 2,400 is responsible for 157,000 active-duty military, retirees and family members, accommodating on an average day more than 1,800 prescriptions, 107 emergency department visits and 335 X-rays and other radiological procedures.

Those needing longer inpatient care or specialized surgeries for amputations and other combat wounds are treated first at Naval Medical Center San Diego in Balboa Park.

The Camp Pendleton hospital project was the Navy Department’s largest using economic stimulus funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The old building, designed in 1969, needed extensive seismic retrofitting to comply with California regulations for hospital facilities, and would have been replaced anyway within the next decade, according to Navy Facilities Engineering Command, Southwest.

Construction of the 500,000-square-foot, four-floor hospital near Camp Pendleton’s main gate and base shopping exchange began Dec. 2, 2010, by Clark/McCarthy Joint Venture. Medical clinics began moving into the new building Dec. 2.

It was completed six months early and more than $100 million under budget, the Navy announced.

The old hospital building is being transferred to the Marine Corps for office space.

Speakers at the Friday ceremony included Mike McCord, principal deputy undersecretary of defense; Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense; Lt. Gen. John Toolan, commanding general of the West Coast Marine force headquartered at Camp Pendleton; and Rear Adm. C. Forrest Faison, the former head of Navy Medicine West who is now deputy surgeon general of the Navy.

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