JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA –
Naval Health Clinic Charleston’s staff consists of highly skilled military and civilian professionals dedicated to providing the gold standard of patient-centered, health care to service members, family members and veterans.
One component of our beneficiaries is active duty service members. Whether we’re ensuring our active duty service members are ready for duty anywhere, at any time, or providing medical care to our veterans after they’ve hung up their uniforms for the last time, the common thread among the staff at Naval Health Clinic Charleston is providing the highest quality, safest and most effective care wherever our patients are located.
If our patients can’t get to the Capt. John G. Feder Joint Ambulatory Care Clinic, in Goose Creek, South Carolina, we go to them.
The majority of our active duty beneficiary population at NHCC is made of students from the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. Each week, a group of our staff members travel to NNPTC to ensure the students’ immunizations are up to date and to provide medical indoctrination briefings, including proper dental care, preventive medicine, TRICARE and clinic services information.
We provide influenza vaccinations to NNPTC, as well as to students and staff of the Nuclear Power Training Unit, members of the Navy Munitions Command and personnel and detainees at the Naval Consolidated Brig Charleston.
We also routinely send a team of health care providers to render services at the Brig. Quality health care is as important for prisoners too and the health services are provided to the level and in a professional manner equivalent to what is provided to our beneficiary population as a whole.
We carry out many basic health care services including preliminary health assessments, providing dental care, mental health management and physical therapy. While our team addresses prisoners’ individual needs, they also take a holistic approach by promoting the overall health and well-being of those in custody. Our health care providers do their best to empower inmates with health care education to look after their own health, to better prepare them to return to duty or to the civilian community.
Our staff members are clinically experienced and competent, encompassing a varied mix of skills enabling them to handle the complexities of providing care at highly secured facilities, such as the brig and the nuclear schools.
Also on staff, we have an Operational Forces Medical Liaison serving as a point of contact between NHCC and other treatment facilities, both military and private. The medical liaison is on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For example, if a service member, not assigned to a unit at Joint Base Charleston, is traveling through the Lowcountry and experiences an emergency, such as an appendectomy or a car accident, the Operational Forces Medical Liaison coordinates between the patient and their parent command. The OFML sends the parent command notification when one of their members is admitted as a patient to the hospital.
The OFML visits emergently admitted patients within 48 hours and very seriously ill or critically ill patients within 24 hours of their admission. The OFML ensures the health care for the service member is safe, appropriate and of the highest quality. The OFML tracks the patient’s care to ensure accountability, as well as, continuity of care.
We ensure our professionals are prepared for real-life clinical situations, both on the homefront and on the battlefield. At NHCC, our hospital corpsmen are on stand-by, to deploy at a moment’s notice to the front lines. They routinely travel with Sailors and Marines worldwide, providing critical mission support aboard ships, in the air and under the sea. They also provide medical care and education in impoverished communities, working within partnerships to help patients experience improved health and wellness.
In short, our health care workers provide a bridge to accessible and critical, but easy to understand medical care. We continue to take measured steps to increase our abilities to reach and care for our beneficiaries, regardless of their location.
To find out more about Naval Health Clinic Charleston, download our mobile app, NHCC APP, or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Navalhealthcliniccharleston2010 or our website at http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/chas/Pages/default.aspx.