21st MDG getting more room to keep Airmen healthy

  • Published
  • By Corey Dahl
  • 21st Space Wing Public Affairs
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. --  From annual check-ups to regular food inspections to pre-deployment vaccinations, the men and women of the 21st Medical Group take care of Airmen and their families in a number of ways.

And now, thanks to a $12 million renovation of the Peterson clinic, the medical group is about to get a lot more space to perform all its missions.

The clinic is undergoing a 12-phase renovation that will add roughly 6,000-square-feet to the building and maximize the use of existing space. Scheduled for completion in April 2009, the re-model will allow the clinic to add a handful of new doctors and increase the number of beneficiaries it serves from 25,000 each year to about 30,000.

"Right now, the clinic is sorely deficient in space," said Thom O'Neill, medical facilities manager. "Everyone's right on top of each other. This will allow us to spread out a little and give the beneficiaries a more modern, accessible clinic."

Providing modern, accessible healthcare is what the 21st MDG is all about, according to Capt. Ian Wiechert, the group's public health flight commander. The group serves both Peterson and Schriever's employees, dependents and retirees and operates a 24-hour aid station at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station.

It also provides support to the 21st Space Wing's geographically-separated units, either in the form of periodic medical visits or by securing agreements with other providers to care for those units. As a result of all the wide-ranging support, The 21st MDG is the largest medical group in Air Force Space Command any way you look at it - it has the largest scope, it serves the most people and it has the most people working for it.

"When you look at the other space bases, for the most part, they have their own wing and their base and they focus on that," Captain Wiechert said. "We're a little different. We don't support the entire wing globally, but we come pretty close."

That support ranges from taking care of standard medical issues, from dental cleanings to annual physicals, to lesser known tasks, such as inspecting all of the base's food facilities and water supply and investigating potential disease outbreaks. The 21st MDG is also key in readying Airmen for deployment.

The group promotes year-round readiness by crafting weekly reports for all of the wings and bases it supports, Captain Wiechert said.

"It gives commanders awareness of the deployability of their units at any one given snapshot in time," he said. "That way, if there's something that needs to be worked on, it can get taken care of before someone is called up to deploy. That way, they're deploying more quickly; they're ready."

The group also processes all Airmen deploying when they're leaving as well as when they're coming back, making sure they receive the vaccines and medical records they need when they go and the necessary post-deployment care when they get home.

The medical group is able to conduct so many missions efficiently largely due to the state-of-the-art technologies and innovative databases it uses, Captain Wiechert said.

"I think sometimes people have kind of an outdated view of military medicine - you know, it's field medicine, not really technical or advanced," he said. "But it's really not anymore. In a lot of ways, we're at the forefront when it comes to technology and what we have to offer."

For example, the dental clinic has gone digital, the pharmacy has a sophisticated drug tracking system and auto dispensers, and radiology was one of the first facilities in town to get a digital mammography unit, Captain Wiechert said.

As the clinic undergoes its renovation, services will likely continue to improve, said 1st Lt. Jason Donovant, development director for the project. Mental Health will move into the old enlisted club building, adding child psychology and post-deployment health surveillance capabilities. New women's health and pediatrics clinics will open in June, and the whole building will be more user-friendly and have improved handicapped access.

"The most important piece is always doing what's right for the patient," he said. "That's the main thing with this entire project."

 

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