Squadron of the Month: Goose Creek Naval Health Clinic serves 18K men and woman

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCSC) - It’s a staple that has been in the Charleston community for more than a century and, while it has had several locations, the Charleston Naval Health Clinic just cut the ribbon on its facility after a 5-year, $25 million renovation project.

In 1902, the Tent Hospital at the Navy Shipyard opened its doors in the Charleston community and has a rich history.

“I think the Naval Health Clinic has been part of the footstep of Charleston,” Captain Anja Dabelic, the Commanding Officer at the Naval Health Clinic Charleston, says. “We’ve just morphed over time becoming more advanced and continue to provide the care to the community and we love doing it.”

It operated as a 1,000-bed emergency hospital during WWI. It dropped to a much lower capacity in 1922 for about two decades but then ramped back up during WWII. The Naval Base and Shipyard closed in 1996. But, in 2007, the Naval Health Clinic Charleston officially moved to the Naval Weapons Station and hadn’t undergone renovations since 2010 until now.

“There were some vulnerabilities as far as the windows and the ceiling and things like that,” Commander James Lagger, the Director for Administration for the Health Clinic, says. “So over time we had a lot of just leakage. We had a lot of just issues with water intrusion to our facility. So it was a major effort, multiple stakeholders, lots of just great cooperation by our staff - like a chess board moving offices.”

Commander Lagger says the renovations have made the building more hurricane and water-resistant.

The role of those at the Naval Health Clinic is medical readiness.

“Medical readiness is all about my ability to go anywhere, anytime, any place - ready to fight tonight,” Commander Lagger says. “That means if I go anywhere in this world, I don’t want to be battling toothaches. I don’t want to be battling any health injuries. They’re going to prevent me from doing my wartime specialty. And so what medical readiness means is taking care of mind, body and soul.”

There are about 300 people employed at the Naval Health Clinic, approximately 100 military, about 175 civilian and then a smattering of contractors. All who provide care to around 18,000 active-duty personnel, dependents and veterans.

“We’re trying to ensure that we’re supporting the fleet and all the ships have the manpower they need so we’re pushing a lot of people forward to be able to fill that mission, Captain Dabelic says. “So for us here left on the CONUS side, CONUS meaning continuous United States and these small little clinics to ensure that we can continue the mission with the manpower we have.”

Their patients include those at Joint Base Charleston and the students at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command

“Lots of moving pieces at all times,” Command Master Chief Nicholas Noviello, Senior Enlisted Leader at Naval Health Clinic Charleston, says. “I think it’s our day-to-day operations and making sure we get enough of our training in there. For the development of sailors as well as meeting our mission, taking care of our sailors and our patients, especially the nuclear pipeline across the street. So we have nuke students. Right now, it’s the only Navy nuclear pipeline school. So they all come through Charleston and when they graduate in about two years, they head to aircraft carriers and submarines out in the fleet. So fleet concentration development for those sailors across the street and we’re here to provide that medical support.”

SPECIAL SECTION: Squadron of the Month

And with all of that care also comes a lot of prescriptions. The Naval Health Clinic runs one of the largest pharmacies in the greater-Charleston area.

“Here at the pharmacy, we fill a roughly around one thousand prescriptions daily,” Kaelyn Mendez, Hospital Corpsman Third Class and Pharmacy Staff Member, says. “I’m also in charge of executing a seven-million-dollar budget for the inpatient outpatient medications in the clinic.”

Over the past year, they also implemented a new electronic health record system and switched everyone’s files over.

“We have a great Pharmacy Department here,” Mendez says. “We work very well together, especially to support the patient population. We’ve overcome a lot of obstacles.”

And then there’s something you might not think about. There’s also a Public Health Department which tests water, is in charge of a mosquito abatement program and makes sure that the barracks and habitability programs for all our structures on base are within livable conditions.

“We have all our different samples how we can test for hardness, pH, bacteria,” Chief Hospital Corpsman Joseph Stanco, a Public Health Chief Petty Officer and Independent Duty Corpsman, says. “We put in the samples to see if they if it grows within our incubators. So we keep all our water stuff over here. We have our mosquito traps and what we do is we put dry ice in them and it creates a lot of CO2. Mosquitoes like CO2 and they have fans and it sucks them up and then they freeze and they’re trapped in there and then we go ahead and we count them. We report that over to the Air Force to make sure that they’re spraying program is killing the mosquitoes that we want them to kill in the right amount.”

And while a lot of the services at the Naval Health Clinic are preventative care, there are opportunities for servicemen and women to learn more.

“I was selected to go work in a trauma one hospital center and it’s with civilians,” Hospital Corpsman Second Class Christopher Mincey, a Military Medicine Staff Member, says. “So I was able to work in WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina. “You get to see patients that you won’t see day-to-day -- anything from gunshot wound victims, motor vehicle accidents, domestic violence. It was honestly probably one of the best experiences I’ve had in the military.”

In addition to getting all health records online, the Naval Health Clinic is expanding its telemedicine program and making sure that everyone has access to mental health care.

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