Navy Med, Walter Reed already trading staff

The military officially merged more than 200 of its top orthopedic surgery and physical rehabilitation staff at Walter Reed and Navy Med last December. Under the merger, 68 of Bethesda’s ortho-rehab personnel and 160 of their Walter Reed counterparts shuffle between the two bases, able to treat patients at either campus.

The idea is to make BRAC’s transition as seamless as possible, according to military officials.

‘‘As construction [at Bethesda] moves forward, we’re going to need to be able to move resources,” said Army Col. William C. Doukas, who heads the integrated department of orthopedics and rehabilitation.

Doukas said that, as a resident of Bethesda’s Maplewood neighborhood, he is concerned about traffic stemming from BRAC. Doukas said he staffs both the Bethesda and District sites, but tries to assign personnel to make them as stationary as possible and cut down on intercampus travel.

‘‘Clearly, we are concerned as citizens that we have minimal impact on congestion,” Doukas said.

Some staff drive between Bethesda and Walter Reed, because of limited public transit between the bases. It takes 50 minutes by bus and rail to travel between Bethesda and Walter Reed, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Web site. A shuttle between the two bases runs in roughly 30-minute intervals.

‘‘What I envision eventually is that [inter-base transit schedules] will become more routine,” said Cmdr. Patrick A. Sanderson, a Navy consultant for the integration process. ‘‘For the individuals going back and forth, some are using it; some are not.”

About 500 staff and doctors will join Sanderson and his colleagues within the next couple of months. According to integration officials, the Pentagon will soon announce the mergers of pathology, dermatology and pediatrics departments at Navy Med and Walter Reed.

‘‘You’re gonna have more traffic for sure,” Sanderson said.

The BRAC move will bring as many as 2,500 more base employees and 535,000 patients and visitors to Bethesda annually, according to Navy estimates.

The Navy plans a summer release of its Environmental Impact Statement about BRAC’s effects on Bethesda, including possible changes in traffic volume. The report will publicly detail the military’s predictions about the long-term integration process.

Though traffic may jam even as formal integration moves forward, military officials said the bases are ironing out internal wrinkles in advance of BRAC.

‘‘There’s two ways of doing it,” said Col. Nadja West, an Army officer who oversees integration at Navy Med. ‘‘Waiting until 2011 and dumping everybody in one place — kind of like dumping out your laundry, the colors and whites, or separating it. So that when you go to the laundromat you’re all ready to go.”

Though collaboration between bases has always been part of military medicine at Walter Reed and Navy Med, integration officials said the new formal partnership has yielded smoother transfers. West said that hand surgeons and other orthopedic specialists are now basically interchangeable at Walter Reed and Bethesda.

‘‘There’s already such a collaborative attitude between the two facilities that I think the integration will go smoothly,” West said.

West disagreed with the prediction that new mergers will add drivers to roads around Navy Med.

‘‘I really don’t see that happening until the construction piece begins,” she said.