BETHESDA, Md. (WUSA) -- We got a first peek at the remarkable medical care our wounded warriors will get at the new Walter Reed National Military Hospital here.
Sometime in the next few weeks, a caravan will carry more than 100 in-patients from the old Walter Reed Army Hospital in Northwest DC to the new expanded joint services hospital.
But there are already hundreds of patients in Bethesda. And the patients we talked to were very happy with their care. "It's like my best friends are doctors," says Lance Corporal Corey Szucs, who lost a leg in an i.e.d. attack in Afghanistan.
Szucs says he's never been better. Really. Never better. "I mean, I don't have to worry about arthritis in my knee. I don't have to cut my toenails or match my socks anymore."
Szucs now has four different prosthetic legs and he says he's a better snowboarder than before he was hit by an i-e-d in Afghanistan. "I was on the bunny hill when I went with my real leg." Now he says he's on the black diamonds.
The $1.2 billion expansion will make the new Walter Reed even bigger than the biggest mall in the world. It will have 13,000 staffers and one million patient visits a year.
And organizers say it's all designed to heal our wounded warriors as quickly as possible, from the piano in the lobby and 100% fresh air in the HVAC system to the best equipment and the windows in every one of the intensive care rooms.
"Here you can be severely injured on the battleground in Afghanistan on Monday, and you might roll into my ICU on Thursday," says Adm. Matthew Nathan, the hospital commander.
In any bureaucracy, it's possible to lose sight of the core mission. But hospital leaders say they are determined to avoid the kind of scandal that engulfed the old Walter Reed a few years ago. "From the beginning of the war, our hearts were always in it, and our spirits were always into taking care of warriors," says Adm. Nathan. "We now recognize some of the logistical challenges that crept in along the way."
One measure of success: the big dreams of the young troops recovering at the hospital. "They work wonders around here," says Lance Corporal John Stearns. "I want to be a radiologist."
It's dream instilled by the doctors who've helped him.
How good is military medical care now?The admiral says injured troops who make it to a forward-deployed medical unit now have a 98.5% chance of surviving. That is way better than they've had in any war before.
Written and Reported by Bruce Leshan
9News Now and wusa9.com