CAPT Melissa Austin, MD: From Warship to Walter Reed
CAPT Melissa Austin, MD, never planned to run the nation's flagship military hospital. She planned to be a doctor, and the Navy sent her to sea instead. That detour, and the ones that followed, produced the leader who walked into a quiet Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and set out to fill it again.
An Army Father's Advice and a Navy Oiler
CAPT Austin earned both Army and Navy ROTC scholarships at Vanderbilt. Her Army father told her she was the better fit for the Navy because she did not take orders terribly well, and she took his advice. When she graduated in 1996, the Navy was short on line officers and was not taking anyone into the staff corps. The pre-med biomedical engineer became a surface warfare officer and reported to a 40-year-old oiler out of Bremerton, Washington, where she served as main propulsion officer over two engineering divisions. She calls that steam engineering education the most useful thing she knows as director of Walter Reed.
The Long Road to Pathology
After three sea and joint tours, CAPT Austin separated from active duty to pursue medicine, then chose the Health Professions Scholarship Program because she was not ready to leave the Navy. Medical school at the University of Colorado was followed by a transitional internship at Bethesda and a general medical officer tour in Hawaii, where 15 independent duty corpsmen worked for her on the waterfront. She completed pathology residency at the University of Washington before returning to Walter Reed.
Leadership Was Already in Her DNA
CAPT Austin says the surface warfare community made leadership part of the job from the first day. An unexpected medical director position and a year as an executive assistant showed her how much impact she could have on the mission and the people. Mentors across Navy medicine and the Defense Health Agency held the bar high and pushed her forward, and a January 2023 phone call from LTG Telita Crosland put her in the director's chair.
Walking Into a Quiet Hospital
What struck CAPT Austin on her first walk through the building was the silence. "I saw empty waiting rooms, I saw empty beds, closed wards, people in their offices with doors closed," she recalls. "It was just eerie and I wanted that to change." She built her vision around three missions only Walter Reed can accomplish: prepare for the next conflict, train and sustain the medical force, and ensure the government never has a day it cannot function for a medical reason. Sending a talented staff to work elsewhere, she explains, is like buying hundreds of dollars of groceries for a great dinner and then sending the kids out for pizza.
The Turnaround by the Numbers
The results are measurable. When CAPT Austin took over, Walter Reed had about 70 inpatients and roughly 100 available beds. Today it runs about 220 beds with a census in the 130s and 140s. Open operating rooms have grown from eight to 14 of 18, enrollment has reversed its decline, and Walter Reed is a Level II trauma center again. New partnerships with Kaiser Permanente, the Johns Hopkins Family Health Plan, the Murtha Cancer Center, and the Uniformed Services University are bringing in the right number and the right complexity of patients.
The Day the Buses Came
CAPT Austin's proudest moment came when Walter Reed received the largest group of casualties since the mid-2010s. Ambulance buses under police escort from Andrews backed up full to the emergency room and offloaded, and the team was ready. Two and a half years earlier, she says, it would not have been. That readiness rests on roughly 6,000 people who keep coming to work despite traffic, aging infrastructure, and parking, and who stayed when offered reasons to leave.
Listen and Share
CAPT Austin's advice to anyone considering military medicine is to be open to the adventure, jump in with both feet, and enjoy the journey. Listen to the full conversation with host MG (Ret) Jeff Clark, and share it with someone who is weighing a career in military medicine.
HOW TO LISTEN AND WATCH
The episode featuring CAPT Melissa Austin, MD, Director, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Here are some popular links that will bring you directly to the episode:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/iREcPOm-DUE
GUEST BIO
Captain Austin was commissioned in 1996 and designated a Surface Warfare Officer in 1998. She completed sea tours on USS Sacramento (AOE 1) and USS O’Kane (DDG 77) and a joint tour at HQ NORAD/USSPACECOM before attending medical school at the University of Colorado. She completed a Transitional Internship at National Naval Medical Center before returning to the fleet as a General Medical Officer. Following residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the University of Washington, she served in various roles at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as Director for Clinical Support Services at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital (now Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center), and in the Corps Chiefs’ Office at the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Her Executive Medicine tenure includes assignments as Executive Officer/Deputy Director of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Commanding Officer of Expeditionary Medical Facility Juliet and Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Fort Belvoir, and current duties as Director of Walter Reed. Captain Austin is Board Certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, holds a Master’s Degree in Biology (Bioinformatics), is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business Executive Physician Leadership Academy, and is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
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