Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center: A History of Excellence in Military Medicine

Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center, formerly known as Wilford Hall Medical Center, is a United States Air Force (USAF) medical treatment facility located on the grounds of Joint Base San Antonio–Lackland (formerly known as Lackland Air Force Base). Designated initially as Station Hospital, San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, the facility served aviation cadets that were training at nearby Kelly Field. The Station Hospital was the first hospital established at Lackland Air Force Base when it opened on June 7, 1942.

By the end of World War II, the Station Hospital had grown to a 1,500-bed capacity and became known as a regional care facility. By January 1950 the 3700th Station Medical Squadron at the Station Hospital at Lackland worked cooperatively with the U.S. Army as they were sending patients to the Station Hospital, Fort Sam Houston (BAMC). After the Korean Conflict, the hospital underwent changes to fill the need for added medical care for returning veterans and started new construction for a larger medical facility that opened on November 16, 1957. The hospital complex grew with the construction of “A” Wing in 1960.

On March 2, 1963, the USAF Hospital, Lackland, was redesignated Wilford Hall USAF Hospital after U.S. Air Force surgeon Maj. Gen. Wilford F. Hall. Hall, born on August 12, 1904, in Mount Vernon, Illinois, graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1928 and was commissioned into the Army Medical Corps in 1929. He attended the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field and later served at that command. Hall was instrumental in preparing the Army Air Corps medical services and in the field of aeromedical evacuation. He died on March 1, 1962. 

Wilford Hall USAF Hospital has been on the cutting edge of innovations, such as the  development of the ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a portable heart-lung bypass machine. In 1985 Wilford Hall became the first ECMO center in Texas and pioneered the machine’s use for newborns. The ECMO can save a baby that is dying of respiratory failure. The facility’s ECMO transport program for neonatal care began in the 1990s, and into the twenty-first century Wilford Hall was one of the few ECMO transport centers in the world and had a specialized team conducting ECMO transport missions across the globe.

The medical complex that became known as “Big Willie” continued to expand through construction projects well into the 1980s and added to “D” Wing. Wilford Hall Medical Center maintained its ranking as a leader in Air Force medicine. In 1989, during President George H. W. Bush’s administration, Operation Just Cause into Panama allowed the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army to jointly provide patient care. Military medical personnel worked together to ensure more than 200 wounded service members returned from the operation. They were sent to Wilford Hall and Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) for medical care. President Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush visited the wounded from the Panama invasion at Wilford Hall.

Wilford Hall provided care to veterans and dependents and played a crucial role in treating wounded service personnel after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. In 1993 the U.S. Air Force reorganized the facility as a numbered wing, the 59th Medical Wing. The Wing has the most prominent medical mobility commitment in the USAF and “maintains approximately 1,250 mobility positions.” The 59th Medical Wing supervises deployments for all usaf medical personnel assigned within what would become Joint Base San Antonio, and hospital staff continued researching and treating Gulf War Syndrome and utilizing new technology such as the stereolithography apparatus. By March 1996 the Wilford Hall complex consolidated the functions of labor and delivery.

On September 15, 2011, Wilford Hall Medical Center was redesignated Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center (WHASC), along with the creation of the San Antonio Military Health System (SAMHS), as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process. Wilford Hall began treating wounded through air evacuation flights from conflicts worldwide during this period. Hospital personnel conducted life-saving medical procedures in tandem with the training of future medical professionals. Wilford’s Hall reputation for Air Force medicine earned the facility its nickname of the “flagship hospital of the Air Force,” while serving the community of San Antonio and surrounding region, including readiness to assist in such natural disasters as coastal hurricanes. Much like BAMC, Wilford Hall was a Level 1 trauma center that could treat numerous South Texans, military or civilians alike.

In 2011 Wilford Hall developed the Acute Lung Rescue Transport Team (ALRT). The team flies worldwide and utilizes a portable heart-lung bypass machine, the ECMO, to help adult patients with severe pulmonary and cardiac illnesses. The 59th Medical Wing serves as the hub for ALRT for the U.S. Department of Defense.

On June 7, 2017, a ribbon-cutting ceremony opened the new Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, after a decade of planning, development, and construction. The new Wilford Hall, located just across the street from the original facility, cost approximately $420 million and boasted a 682,000-square-foot state-of-the-art medical facility, compared to the 1.2 million square feet of the earlier hospital. The structure includes four wings on four floors and houses more than twenty-five outpatient clinics. The new facility was rooted in the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Act, which redirected the original Wilford Hall inpatient services to be moved to the San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC). As of 2022 Wilford Hall served more than 55,000 patients and was the Department of Defense’s largest outpatient ambulatory surgical center under the command of the 59th Medical Wing.