Sole American Medical Center in Europe celebrates 70 years

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center hosted a weeklong celebration, open to all DOD-ID cardholders, marking 70 years of selfless service and military medicine in Germany, April 11-14.

The week kicked off on April 11 with the Legacy Olympics, a Kaiserslautern Military Com-munity-wide functional fitness competition hosted by LRMC’s Inpatient Behavioral Health Clinic, to promote physical fitness and healthy alternatives for mental health balance. The event was followed by two days of Leadership Professional Development sessions where current and former commanders, command sergeants major and wounded warriors shared lessons learned during their service / treatment at LRMC and the hospital’s impact on their lives.

April 14, the final day of celebration, featured a ceremony at LRMC’s Heaton Auditorium at 8 a.m. followed by an exhibit hall and live entertainment, allowing patrons to view static displays and learn about operations within the hospital before closing out the celebration with an Organizational Day.

Schedules, biographies, and media resources can be found at https://landstuhl.tricare.mil/About-Us/70-Years-of-Selfless-Service.

About Landstuhl Regional Medical Center

As the sole U.S. medical center overseas and the U.S. military’s medical evacuation center, LRMC’s primary role of critical combat care is to either treat and remedy patients’ medical concerns and return them to their units or stabilize and transfer them to another facility for further care.

With a 99 percent survival rate, the LRMC team has successfully treated more than 97,000 wounded, injured and ill U.S. troops and Coalition Forces from 56 countries who were aeromedically evacuated from throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Strategically located near Ramstein Air Base, LRMC is the largest American medical facility outside the United States, the only American College of Surgeons verified Level II Trauma Center overseas and the only American trauma center associated with a foreign trauma network (the German Society for Trauma Surgery, or Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie — DGU).

The Defense Health Agency medical center and its six additional clinics in Germany, Italy and Belgium are jointly staffed by more than 2000 dedicated professionals, including over 1,000 Army, 260 Air Force, 800 Department of Defense civilians, 300 Local Nationals, as well as Marine Corps, Navy, and Veterans Affairs personnel. This team cares for nearly 205,000 beneficiaries living and working throughout Europe.

The facility offers 53 medical specialties, houses 65 beds and averages more than 2,000 outpatient visits each day. An average daily workload includes 16 inpatient admissions, 26 operating room cases and 2 births.

The original 1,000 bed hospital was dedicated April 7, 1953, as the 320th General Hospital before a reorganization transformed it to the 2nd General Hospital, then Landstuhl Army Medical Center until it was officially named Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in 1994.