Reporting by Joe Hotchkiss, Augusta Chronicle
Georgia’s two U.S. senators are pushing for more answers and demanding solutions for the scheduled downgrading of services at the sole Fort Gordon hospital.
The Defense Health Agency announced in May that it’s proposing a reduction in care options at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center. Rumors of the downgrade had persisted for months.
Under the DHA plan, Eisenhower no longer would have general inpatient hospital beds or provide services such as major surgeries or extended intensive care. Operating rooms would be used only for outpatient surgeries such as tonsillectomies or hernia repairs. The emergency room would close and become a walk-in urgent care clinic.
Without Eisenhower’s 60 inpatient beds and six operating rooms, U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have said that turning away up to 40,000 active-duty service members, retirees and their families from Eisenhower would strain Augusta’s remaining health care providers.
“This is unacceptable,” Warnock and Ossoff wrote in an Aug. 4 letter to the Department of Defense and the DHA. “Service members, their families and veterans in Augusta deserve answers and information on how these potential changes could affect their ability to receive quality health care.”
Questions surround plan for Fort Gordon hospital
The senators want to know exactly how the DHA concluded that Augusta’s civilian hospitals could shoulder the expected increase in military patients. They demand that the DHA disclose all data, cost estimates, and insights from local leaders that helped the agency reach its conclusion to downgrade Eisenhower.
The senators also are asking why Naval Hospital Jacksonville in Florida had appeared on a May 2025 briefing list of four military medical facilities proposed for closing inpatient care, but had disappeared from the list in a congressional notification 10 months later.
“Until more information and clarification is received on this decision, and its potential consequences, DHA must immediately rescind the congressional notification for modification of services at DDEAMC,” Warnock and Ossoff wrote.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle.
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