DATE: Sunday, May 4, 1997                   TAG: 9705020002

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL  

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   56 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: ****************************************************** Correction The new Portsmouth Naval Medical Center is being built at a cost of $350 million. A headline on an editorial in Sunday's Commentary gave the wrong amount. Correction published , Saturday, May 5, 1997, p.A2 ***************************************************************** DON'T END RESIDENCIES IT WOULD BE SENSELESS TO OPEN A $350[SIC] FACILITY WHILE SLASHING THE STAFF

At least for now, the Navy has backed off plans to disband seven of the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center's 12 residency programs.

Eliminating 87 of the hospital's 200 residents, as originally announced, never made financial sense. Residents are doctors who have completed medical school but remain in training. They are cheap, highly trained labor. After nurses, they are the work horses of a hospital's medical staff. And most of their time is spent with patients.

Replacing them with civilian doctors, as has been suggested, would prove expensive. Not replacing them would reduce the quality of care.

Here are more good reasons residents should be kept here:

A $350 million Portsmouth Naval Medical Center will open next year beside the old one. It makes no sense to finally give the local Navy community the state-of-the-art hospital it deserves while slashing the staff.

Hampton Roads is home to the largest concentration of sailors in the world. The hospital serves 425,000 active-duty military personnel, their families and retirees. Original plans called for shifting the seven residency programs to Bethesda National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Better to keep the residents where the sailors are.

Although the Navy has shrunk, the number of people who qualify for military medical care is nearly the same. That's because of the rising numbers of dependents and retirees.

To be fair to the staff at the Portsmouth hospital, the fate of the residency programs should not be left hanging for long.

A report on a big Pentagon assessment of the nation's military strategy, operations and structure is due to Congress on May 15. It could recommend changes in the Navy's size to which Navy medicine would need to adjust. It seems doubtful, however, that the Portsmouth hospital's workload would diminish.

Congressmen Owen B. Pickett, D-2nd District, and Norman Sisisky, D-4th District, have introduced an amendment to the Department of Defense appropriations bill prohibiting the residency changes. They are preparing an amendment requesting a study to determine if two military medical facilities - Bethesda and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center - are needed in the Washington area.

It's good that Pickett and Sisisky are on the case. Ending the seven residency programs in Portsmouth would be dumb.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu