Fort Bliss Breaks Ground On State-Of-The-Art Hospital

Fort Bliss soldiers, their families and veterans will soon have a world-class health care facility on post, officials announced during a ground-breaking ceremony Friday.

Beaumont Army Medical Center is heading east with the major new expansion known as “East Fort Bliss.”

It will be built at the southwest corner of the intersection of Loop 375 and Spur 601 at a cost of almost $1 billion. It is expected to be completed in 2016.

With the Franklin Mountains as a backdrop, the two-story, four-building facility has been designed specifically to care for wounded soldiers and their families.

The new hospital will include “healing gardens, advanced technology, smart-room technology so that when a doctor walks into a room he can see the medical patient’s status,” Beaumont commander, Col. Dennis Doyle, said.

At a cost of $950 million, the new hospital is expected to only take up one-third of a 272 acre campus.

The construction phase will be a significant economic boon to our community, Doyle said. He said the project is expected to create about 2,500-3,000 local jobs.

“Depends on how those jobs are sourced, but it looks like we’re going to create quite a few jobs,” Doyle said.

A spokesman for Beaumont Army Medical Center said that us at this time, no plans have been made for the old hospital.