Col. Kevin Kelly, Commander, Brooke Army Medical Center
With a rich military culture, San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center is among the top healthcare systems in the region. As a level one trauma center serving military and civilian patients alike, the medical center is hard at work meeting the healthcare needs of its community while also championing research efforts and molding the industry’s future leaders. “As a hospital and health system, our priority will always be to take the best care of our patients and provide high-quality and safe care that they can trust, providing the best medical care that we possibly can,” Col. Kevin Kelly, commander of the Brooke Army Medical Center, told Invest:.
What are your immediate priorities as the newly appointed commander of the Brooke Army Medical Center?
My immediate priorities as the new leader are to understand the organization, our strengths, our weaknesses, and what opportunities we have moving forward that fall under the priorities of our higher headquarters, which are the Army, the Defense Health Agency, and Military Medicine. We are evaluating all of these matters. My predecessor did a great job leading the organization during a time of transformation for the military health system occurring over the past five to seven years. He built a great culture, and as such we are looking at what to do next to support the military health system, our patients, and our teammates. As a new leader of a healthcare organization, I have priorities that are still mostly personal, which then turn into priorities for the team. First and foremost, the success and well-being of the teammates and staff, which includes military and civilian personnel, is our priority. We will make sure to continue to invest in them and ensure they have the resources necessary to do their jobs and that there are opportunities for them to develop. As a hospital and health system, our priority will always be to take the best care of our patients and provide high-quality and safe care that they can trust, providing the best medical care that we possibly can. My personal belief is that those people we are entrusted to take care of are our military warriors and their families, and we should strive to do everything possible to provide them the best medical care.
Also, being part of the military, we need to prioritize training and education because medical care can be both local and global. We focus a lot on ensuring that we train our military personnel on how to do their jobs locally and in other situations, such as combat. Brooke Army Medical Center is an important part of this because we are the Department of Defense’s only level one trauma center, and we are the busiest hospital in the department. We are poised to provide ongoing training and education opportunities.
Additionally, being a great community partner is important to us. As a health system, we need to give back to the community and be a good community partner.
Lastly, another priority is to develop our leaders, and we will continue to do this. It is part of the military culture to develop future leaders. It is important for any organization to have a plan to develop its future leaders.
What are some efforts to advance medical research and development?
Research falls in line with my immediate priorities, especially as it relates to being a good partner to the community. If you think about the community at large, we are a hospital that provides a lot of medical care, such as taking care of acute injuries or the rehabilitation of burn victims. We have the responsibility to the greater medical community to conduct research and report on what we find. Research is an opportunity for those professionals to create and learn new things, but it is also a responsibility to the medical profession because we are always looking to innovate and improve. We never accept the status quo in medicine. We are always looking to improve processes and procedures. As one large military hospital, we have that responsibility, and these efforts also translate into the battlefield. Research takes time and investment from internal and external resources. As we evaluate those opportunities, we will continue to look for research partnerships.
How is the medical center leveraging today’s emerging technologies?
We are continuously improving our electronic health record. We always evaluate what tools we can use to be more effective with our electronic health records, whether that is being predictive for the clinician, which helps them before they even see the patient by looking at the proper test orders or pulling the most recent medical records, for example. In medicine, this technology allows us to have the most up-to-date information and to bring it all together, whether it is through AI or other similar technologies available at our fingertips. There is still some time before we can fully leverage AI into clinical care, where we might have AI making clinical decisions. In the near term, technology is more of an enabler. It can do the menial tasks, which then frees up your personnel to take more challenging tasks and thus increase capacity. Or it improves capability by providing information at the point of interest, providing the best information to make a clinical decision. Some technologies across medicine are helping clinicians with things like AI reviews of radiographs or mammograms. We are certainly going to be maximizing the utilization of those within our hospital and the military in general.
